Total pages in book: 107
Estimated words: 105850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105850 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
“It’ll all work out.” He kissed my left cheek, then my right, then my forehead, before finally finishing his little journey around my face with another peck to the tip of my nose. “We’ll go back to the cottage, pretend the real world doesn’t exist, and just be together the way we have been for the last week.”
“I don’t know. Ignoring my anxieties seems like a bad idea.”
“On the other hand, so is focusing on them.” He smiled, meeting my eyes. “And they’re not your anxieties. They’re our anxieties.”
His words wrapped around me like a warm blanket, and I clamped my arms around his waist, squeezing him tightly.
“I can’t believe I used to imagine hitting you over the head with a box file,” I muttered into his shoulder.
“You used to do what?”
“Never mind.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE – THEO
Crazy Old Man
Two Weeks Later
Our time in Buckley Heath could be split into two parts: before and after.
Before was the three weeks when we slowly became friends, and after was the lightspeed with which our friendship turned into something more.
Our trip back to London two weeks ago had marked the true turning point, but not much had changed after. As I’d said to Chloe, we’d returned back to the cottage and carried on as if we didn’t have a real life to come back to. The past two weeks had been chaotic from a work perspective, but nothing but peace outside of those hours.
Well.
Peace was the wrong word for it.
There’d really not been much peaceful about what we’d been doing.
Hidden away in the cottage was almost like being on holiday. As soon as the work hours were over, we were just two people who were living together. Chloe had even loosened up during work while we were holed up in the cottage working from our shared office sapce and hadn’t stuck to her rules quite as strongly as she had before we’d admitted our feelings for one another.
I still couldn’t believe that had happened. I’d wanted her for long, but I’d never allowed myself to believe that anything could truly happen between us. I’d honestly never thought for a second that she would return my feelings for her based on our relationship before we’d left.
But that was then.
The six weeks we’d spent living together had flipped everything I thought I knew about Chloe St. James on its head. I’d spent thousands of hours with her, both before and after she became my secretary, but I couldn’t believe it’d taken the trip to Buckley Heath for me to see who she really was.
Although part of that had been my fault. I really hadn’t been the best boss, and every time I looked back on how harsh and demanding I was, I was washed with a wave of guilt.
It was no exaggeration to say that Chloe had changed me.
Or rather I’d changed because of her. She made me want to be a better person in every way, and in order to do that, I needed to let go of the things holding me back.
One of those things was my past relationship.
I would never be completely comfortable with an office relationship. The power dynamic in our situation was something that would always be ripe for discussion and gossip, no matter how many times I tried to convince myself otherwise.
Especially so given that I would one day own the company. Rumours would always surround our relationship, and the initial ones would be far more disparaging to me than her; that I’d abused my authority, I was forcing her to be with me, that sort of thing.
After all, nobody other than us knew how our relationship dynamic had evolved during our trip. That was one of the reasons that Chloe had already explicitly told me that we had to keep our relationship a secret. There’d been no complaints from me—I didn’t want to hide it, but I knew it was for the best.
Besides.
She was still resigning.
At least that was my assumption. She hadn’t said anything contrary to that, and she already had a meeting with Gramps scheduled for today. I was too afraid to bring it up in case she’d answer that she was still doing it.
I didn’t want her to leave, even more so than before. It completely contradicted my feelings about a relationship in our positions, but I couldn’t bear the thought of not seeing her as much as I did every single day.
We’d only been back in London for two days, and I was already losing my mind not being with her.
If I’d loved her before, I was helplessly obsessed with her now.
And that was the very reason for my messy feelings. If she resigned and worked somewhere else, my biggest anxiety would be rendered null. It was no secret that Chloe was close to my grandfather and father, and eventually coming clean about a relationship to them would be easy.