She hesitated before speaking. ‘All I will say is that Thadie and the boys are very close, and they pick up on her emotions. They’ve been quieter, clingier, less loud and energetic lately.’
Angus said goodbye to Tumi and instructed his PA to cancel his call with his VP. He locked his office door and sat down on his couch, his forearms on his knees. His world felt bleak and colourless, and he couldn’t go on like this. Thadie was miserable and that was unacceptable. That, in itself, was a failure.
And all his fault.
Thadie was the strongest woman and he admired and respected everything about her. She hadn’t let her parents’ neglect harden or break her. And when she’d found out she was pregnant with his sons, she’d given up her dreams and career to focus her attention on them. She loved them so much that she’d been prepared to marry another man to give them a father.
All she’d wanted was for someone to put her first, to love her. To be the centre of someone’s world.
Despite everything she’d been through lately, she’d still had the guts to tell him she loved him, the self-knowledge, respect and awareness to know what he was offering wasn’t good enough. And it hadn’t been. She deserved everything he could give her. To be the centre ofhisworld.
But could he love her the way she needed him to? Was there even a wrong way to love? Was love something that he could fail at? Maybe, just maybe, he failed when hedidn’tlove, not when he did.
Thadie deserved him to find his courage—emotional courage was on a whole new level—and commit to her, to love her with everything he had. Proving to his father that he was worthy of being a Docherty didn’t matter any more. He was over that. He’d always thought that his company would be the legacy he left behind, but raising good men, men with integrity and loyalty, would be a far bigger gift to the world.
Being with Thadie, loving her, and putting a ring on her finger, would be the gift he gave himself. And if he didn’t step up, he’d lose her. And not being with her, living his life loving her, would be the ultimate failure.
And the only one that would ever matter.
The next morning, Thadie walked into her kitchen, and headed straight to her coffee machine, reaching for a coffee mug. It was early, and she’d spent another night tossing and turning, missing Angus with every breath she took. She shoved her cup under the spout and hit the button with the side of her fist.
When would her broken heart start to heal? Would it? She hoped so. She looked forward to the day when she didn’t feel as if she were walking around with a knife lodged in her chest. Thadie gripped the edge of the counter as the machinedispensed coffee into her cup, extending her arms and dropping her head to look at the floor.
Dawn was breaking, and she had to find the strength to smile and laugh with the boys, to be normal. And she had to stop sneaking off to cry. One of these days they were going to catch her and ask her a bunch of questions she didn’t want to answer.
What could she say to them? ‘I’m crying because your dad doesn’t love me. I wish he did.’
Yeah...
No.
‘I want this view, for the rest of my life.’
At his deep voice, Thadie screamed, knocking her cup out of the machine and onto the floor. She stared at the broken pieces, the brown liquid on her tiles, scared to lift her head to see if she’d really heard Angus’s voice. She might just be losing her mind. And if she was, she wasn’t ready to face that reality.
‘Don’t move.’
Thadie kept her eyes on the mess, and it was only when his arm encircled her waist, when the heat of his big body burned through the material of her short dressing gown—the same one she’d worn when she’d given her infamous press conference—that reality slapped her sideways. Angus was here.
He walked her across the kitchen, lowered her to the ground and pulled a kitchen chair out from under the table. ‘Sit,’ he told her.
She did, but only because her knees were feeling distinctively wobbly. Thadie watched, bemused, as he dropped to his haunches to pick up the big shards of the broken coffee mug, then mopped up the liquid. Her mouth opened and closed. She didn’t know what to say.
So she went for the most obvious question. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked. ‘Why are you in my kitchen at—’ sheglanced at the oversized clock on the wall to her right ‘—five forty-five in the morning? How did you get into my kitchen?’
‘I picked up a key from Micah ten minutes ago.’
Micah gave him a key?
Angus reached for another cup, put it under the spout and started the machine. She thought he said something about needing a slug of whiskey but wasn’t sure if she’d heard him correctly. Her brain felt as if it had been slapped by a tornado. Whirly and swirly and as if she didn’t know what side was up.
‘You told me you could only make it back here to see the boys at month end,’ she said, her voice wobbly. ‘That’s in two weeks.’
‘I couldn’t wait that long,’ Angus told her, grabbing the cup, and dumping a teaspoon of sugar into it. He took a sip, grimaced and placed it on the table next to her elbow.
Right, he had to be missing the boys. That made sense. But could he not have waited until she was dressed, her teeth brushed and with a little make-up on? Or until she was, well, awake?
‘The boys will be happy to see you,’ Thadie said, dully. ‘They’ve missed you.’