One of them had to be sensible.
“This is unrealistic thinking, Hunter, it really is. We’ve had a nice time but, deep down, you know we are both too screwed up to have the big house, kids and white picket fence. I’m the product of two of the most dysfunctional people in the world and you, when you recover from this rush of blood to your brain, you’ll regret your words. In time you’ll feel frustrated at having to balance a girlfriend and your work. You’ll start to resent me and I’ll start to hate you and if we have a kid together, it’ll be a hundred times worse. And we’ll screw up a child who didn’t ask for any of this. You haven’t thought this through.”
“I’m thirty-five years old Adie, and I run a multibillion dollar company. I know my own mind,” Hunt said, sounding annoyed. He reached out to take her hand and sighed when Adie hid her hands behind her back. She couldn’t let him touch her. If she did, she’d sink into him and that would be disastrous.
“Give it a shot, Adie. Give us a chance. I know we live in different cities, but we’ll figure it out. We’ll take it step by step if that makes you feel more comfortable.”
Adie shook her head, walked over to the bed and picked up her bag, slinging it over her shoulder. Then she grabbed the handle of her suitcase and tipped it onto its wheels. “I can’t, Hunter. I mean, I could stay, we could try and make it work but we both know it would fall apart eventually. I’m not good at relationships. I don’t believe in love and I don’t trust it. I know that I will never let myself love you because I’m terrified of giving myself over to something that won’t last. And because my fear is bigger than anything, I will kill what we feel and you will end up hating me.
“And I can’t live my life knowing you hate me, Hunt.”
Hunt jammed his hands beneath his armpits and rocked on his heels. He looked away, and when he spoke again, he sounded miserable. “Don’t walk out, Adie, don’t go. Let’s work this out.”
Adie simply shook her head and pulled her bag out of the room, heading straight for his elevator. She glanced at the big Christmas tree in the corner of the sitting room, the hand-painted ornaments glinting in the morning light.
Happy damn Christmas to me.
This one, she decided, would probably be more miserable than all the rest put together.
Unfortunately, there was no one to blame but herself.
Ten
Adie had heard about receiving signs from a higher being but had always thought the universe had better things to do than send messages to inconsequential humans. But, sitting on the steps leading up to her flat in Notting Hill after a twenty-hour trip through hell, she was, maybe, starting to believe the New Agers might be onto something.
Because, damn, her flight from JFK had been a series of rolling disasters from start to finish. On her arrival at the airport, there had been, inexplicably, confusion about her ticket, with the computer not being able to find her booking. After finally receiving her boarding pass, she’d gone to the wrong gate and she’d heard only one call asking her to report for boarding, causing her to sprint to the other side of the terminal to make her flight. The airline attendants, and the passengers, hadn’t been shy about expressing their irritation.
In the air, she’d thought her problems were over, but turbulence over the Atlantic had been brutal and then her plane had circled Heathrow for an hour before the pilot landed in a violent crosswind. On landing, she’d couldn’t locate her luggage and, on finally reaching her flat—tearful and tired—she realized she’d lost her keys.
Well, not lost precisely, she recalled tipping out the contents of her bag in Hunt’s apartment to swap bags and her keys must’ve fallen to the floor there.
She had a spare set of house keys in her desk drawer at work but the keys to her office were on the same ring as her keys to the flat. She needed her assistant, Kaycee, to let her into the office, but Kaycee was en-route to Dublin to spend Christmas with her family. She could call a locksmith but finding one would be near on impossible and if she did, she’d have to pay a king’s ransom for his services. Another, less stressful option would be for her to find a hotel...
Or to go back to Manhattan...
The thought popped into her head, as it had done every minute since she’d stormed out of The Stellan. But this time she couldn’t push it away, neither did she want to. She wanted to be in New York. Hunt, apparently, wanted her there...
Adie felt a drop of rain on her nose, then another. She glared up at the heavy sky. “Can you give me a break? I’m sitting, I’m thinking, I’m trying to work it out!”
Miraculously, someone upstairs was listening because the rain held off. Adie wrapped her arms around her knees and considered Hunt’s proposal.
Okay, let’s deal with the easy stuff first, she decided. Moving to Manhattan wouldn’t be an issue, Kaycee was fantastically efficient and the majority of Adie’s work was done over the internet. She’d have to fly back to London occasionally but that was why planes were invented.
Her parents wouldn’t care where she lived, neither did they care what she did. They weren’t a factor in her decision-making process.
Right, now she had to confront the thorny issue. Hunt...
No, Hunt wasn’t the problem,shewas.
He’d told her he wanted her to stay, that they had a chance of creating something amazing—a Christmas miracle in itself—and her first inclination was to dismiss his statement. Because, really, who fell in love in under a month?
Especially two people who didn’t believe in love.
But Hunt, as he’d pointed out, was in his midthirties and he was a guy who knew his own mind. He wasn’t one for overstating, for exaggeration. He meant what he said and said what he meant so, yeah, maybe he did want to make this work.
He hadn’t said the words, but Adie thought he might love her. He wouldn’t have given her false hope, mentioned her staying or having his babies if he didn’t.
And falling in love with her was a helluva thing, given his history of loss and hurt and disappointment and his anti-commitment stance. If she weren’t a yellow-bellied scaredy-cat, she’d be thrilled that a man like him—successful and powerful—had lowered his guard to let her into his life. He’d taken a chance, been brave, handed her his heart and his dreams and she’d stomped all over them in her high-heeled boots. Because she was scared.