Harlequin Presents--July 2021--Box Set 1 of 2

by Natalie Anderson

  ‘I’m nothing like him,’ he roared, stopping the car at a red light.

  ‘Are you sure?’ she asked bitterly. ‘Because it seems to me that he was incapable of giving love. And also of receiving it. And isn’t that you?’

  His withdrawal was absolute. The rigidity of his expression. The cold anger in his eyes.

  ‘You don’t want that from me,’ she said. ‘You don’t want my love.’

  ‘You only offer it because you’re confusing lust for love. Because you’re tired and emotional.’

  ‘Are you serious? Are you going to say this is hormones talking?’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘Don’t tell me I’m tired. I’m fine. I’m strong and capable and I’ll survive. More than survive. But I am tired of not having my voice heard. Of not being someone’s number one. Of not being more important than anything else to someone.’

  He froze again. ‘Then if what I’m offering isn’t enough, don’t feel you have to stay.’

  Her heart tore as she swung on the door handle and stumbled out of the car, clutching her little handbag close. She frantically waved at a taxi going past.

  ‘Rosanna!’

  She ignored him. He’d just told her to go. It was the most honest thing he’d said all afternoon.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  LEO CASTLE REFUSED to be angry. Rosanna walking out was the best thing. Definitely best for her. And it had been good to remind himself of his painful past because now he remembered what he wanted to be, how he wanted to live—with honour and utter independence. Security and safety for Rosanna and the babies was paramount and his way to help them achieve that was with his work. Always with work.

  Finally his cool-headed business brain switched on.

  She’d been right in the beginning. There was no need for them to marry. He’d get them an apartment, set the children up with trust funds, ensure Rosanna had more financial support than she could ever need. It was straightforward really. Why had he got so tied up in knots about securing so-called legitimacy and security for them? For thinking that they needed to be married? For thinking that he was integral to making that happen? Quite the reverse was true. They’d be better off without him being overly influential in their lives.

  But here he was once again wide awake in the small hours of the night, overthinking his most personal problems. The things he regretted. The moments he wanted to redo but couldn’t.

  She deserved more. She ought to have felt that spark with someone more worthy than him. Of course he’d failed her. He didn’t know what he was doing and didn’t think he could ever learn. Because there it was, the fear that, with a father like Hugh Castle, he was missing some elemental aspect of humanity. He could work hard. He could think well. But loving someone the way they needed to be loved? Listening to them? Meeting their needs? No. He’d failed at that. Again.

  In his office, hours later, Leo looked down at the list of text messages. Rosanna had sent the same message every day for a week already.

  I’m fine. Will be in touch again soon.

  She was letting him know she was fine. Not where she was. Not what she was doing. Not who she was with. Just very courteous and polite so he wouldn’t worry.

  He wanted to throw his new phone into the goddamn ocean. These messages were rubbish. Not enough. Not ever enough.

  But he refused to phone her. Refused to track where she might be. Refused to write more than his monosyllabic reply. She’d wanted space. He had to give it to her. And he reminded himself, yet again, that he’d done the right thing. The only thing to have done. For her. He couldn’t give her all that she wanted so he’d let her go. That was right, wasn’t it?

  Only he hadn’t let her go, he’d told her to leave. And he hated remembering the look in her eyes at that moment.

  She would be better off with someone else eventually.

  Leo felt capable of violence at the thought of some other man in her life, but he clamped down on every muscle. He didn’t want her to be unhappy and she would be eventually, if she were forced to stay with him, living a life in which he couldn’t give her everything she needed. He couldn’t do the emotional stuff. He didn’t know how to.

  He should have been feeling better by now. It was over a week already. But he wasn’t. And, damn it, he was angry. He was freaking furious.

  Why had she pushed? Why had she asked for more? Why didn’t she understand he’d offered all he had to give? Why couldn’t that be enough for her?

  But why should she settle for less?

  Rosanna Gold deserved the best of everything and everyone.

  Only there was that selfish bit in him that still wanted to keep her for himself. That greedy part of him that tormented him every damn minute with memories—teasing him with sensations and sounds. He remembered her lilting quiet comments, that chime of laughter that became so infectious when she let it go, the softness of her pale skin, her slender waist and that one spot on her back where he could feel where steel met spine.

  She was strong, the thief in his garden. And she was sweet.

  He couldn’t believe that she really was in love with him. He’d told her it was lust clouding everything—as it had clouded his world for weeks. Thanks to him, she’d fallen pregnant. With twins. She’d fallen out even worse with her parents. She’d had to quit her job. He’d completely messed up her life.

  No way could she love him given all that.

  * * *

  Rosanna showered and dressed, glad it was time to get moving. She’d been awake for an hour already and had dwelled long enough for today. She liked to walk to the plant nursery the long way—via the beachfront. She’d found room in a flat share—agreed to a month by month lease, which gave her flexibility for now. And while she’d started at the nursery just on customer service, her boss had quickly realised her knowledge base and had upped her responsibility with the actual plants. So life was going okay, right? Only on the inside, she wasn’t quite okay. Not yet.

  She missed him.

  They’d laughed together. They’d discovered they had stuff in common. She’d enjoyed their conversations—she’d found him fascinating and funny. He’d electrified her life. She’d thought they’d entered their own little world on the reef—one that they’d bring back with them. She’d thought that he trusted her...

  She’d been an idiot. Leo Castle didn’t truly trust anyone and he never would. He’d temporarily allowed her his body, offered her financial and physical stability, even a kind of companionship. As friends. But that was where it ended for him. Whereas for her it had been impossible not to make a far deeper emotional investment. She’d not meant for it to happen. But it had. She’d fallen in love with him. So easily. So quickly. So stupidly.

  As she neared the nursery she turned her phone on and tapped the screen.

  I’m fine. Will be in touch again soon.

  She sent the text to him at the same time each day. Then she sent the same to her parents. Then she turned off her phone again—mostly to stop herself hoping she’d get a decent response. Her parents hadn’t questioned her as to why she’d suddenly decided to move or why she’d not explained her relationship with Leo. Maybe they were too busy with their new contract for him in Queensland already. And Leo had barely replied at all. The first time he’d answered.

  Let me know where you are so we can make arrangements for the future.

  She hadn’t done that yet. She’d just sent the same message. Since then he’d just replied OK.

  She knew hiding was cowardly but right now it was all she could manage. Working was good. Working was a distraction from the brutal fact that she’d asked him to love her and he’d told her to leave. That she’d ruined what they might have had. She’d not been enough—a disappointment yet again. She’d let their children down.

  Leo didn’t want her with him because she couldn’t accept what
he could offer. But no more would she accept less than she needed. No more would she try to be what someone else wanted. Not for the rest of her life.

  She’d never been someone’s number one. Maybe she never would be. But she’d put herself first and by extension her children too. Because she needed to be a better example to them than she’d been until now. She needed to demonstrate self-worth to them so they would grow up strong and happy and capable of loving and being loved.

  So at least now she was holding her own in life. New town. New flat. New job. New friends even—her workmates were friendly, her flatmates too. She’d made more friends here already than she’d made at the university in all those years.

  But that night as she walked home via the beach path, she turned her phone back on and saw she had a message. Her heart stilled. It was her parents. There was some waffle, nervousness even, but also a note of concern she’d not heard before. And then...

  We miss you. Is there anything we can do for you? Anything you need?

  Her mum’s questions ever so slightly soothed a deep wound. For the first time they’d finally asked what—if anything—they could do for her. They’d asked to know her thoughts and how she felt. And she’d tell them. Soon.

  She’d not meant to scare them, which was why she’d messaged each day. But she needed to do this now for herself. So she’d build the courage to eventually figure out some kind of working relationship with Leo.

  It stung that he’d made no effort to contact her more directly, or to find her. Which meant he was truly okay with her leaving. Regardless of the reputation he cared about so damned much, he hadn’t wanted her to stay. And that hurt.

  A stupid part of her had hoped he’d turn up, but over the course of the last fortnight that hope was starting to fade. She’d come to realise that right from the start their entanglement had meant something different to her than it had to him. And if he wasn’t ready to open up to someone, to her? That had to be okay. She couldn’t force him to. It was okay for him not to have fallen in love with her.

  Yet while she knew that rationally, emotionally she was devastated. She’d opened up to him. She’d given herself to him—she’d wanted to give him everything. But he didn’t want it. He didn’t want her.

  He’d be in her life for ever. He was the father of her children. So she knew she had to work out a way where she could cope with seeing him...and, eventually, seeing him with someone else.

  She needed time to build the strength to face that. Time and energy and courage. And she wasn’t going to apologise for taking it now.

  * * *

  Leo didn’t want to work any more, but he had to. It was the only thing he knew—the only way to hold back the emotions festering inside him. He couldn’t face going back to his penthouse—it was filled with her plants—but he’d had to do that too. He was terrified of killing her freaking fish.

  For some unfathomable reason he couldn’t outsource the responsibility of Axel. He now knew more about the care and feeding of axolotls than he’d ever imagined possible. He’d been working round the clock, even when he was at home keeping Axel company—avoiding any downtime in which he might start thinking about her.

  Who was he kidding? He thought about her all the time.

  Losing someone was the worst feeling in the world. He’d never wanted to go through that devastation again. He’d never let anyone close enough. But he was devastated right now.

  So he went to the office. It was the only thing he could think to do, even though he’d never been more sick of it in his life. Hours later he glanced up at the knock on his door and watched his manager, Petra, come in with a wary look on her face. When he’d first got back to the office he’d learned she’d gone to Melbourne to sign up a new client. Now she’d returned and looked as if she were entering a scorpion’s nest as she presented the proposal she’d gone away to deliver.

  ‘You don’t mind that I went ahead and did this without consulting you?’ she asked as he skimmed the fine print.

  Rosanna’s words came back to him. She’d said she felt sorry for his staff because he was such a micromanager. He’d scoffed. But maybe she’d been right?

  ‘Of course not,’ he muttered. ‘I was away. I trust your judgement.’ Then he paused and looked up at Petra. ‘You enjoyed it?’

  ‘Yeah, once I got past the performance anxiety.’

  He felt that twist of guilt tighten. ‘You did a good job,’ he said.

  ‘So it’s okay with you?’

  Petra’s double-checking for reassurance made him feel even worse. Maybe he was more iron fist and less ‘velvet glove’ than he’d realised.

  ‘It’s more than okay.’ A rush of thinking derailed him. Allowing his team greater responsibility would free up some of his own time. ‘Actually I’d like you to take a look at the project list and rank a few you’d like to take greater control of. I need to delegate more and I’d like you to be first in line.’

  Petra’s jaw dropped. ‘Seriously?’

  ‘You’ll need a couple of assistants too,’ he added, thinking it through and feeling the certainty of the direction in his bones. ‘Otherwise you’ll end up like me.’

  Frozen on the inside. Incapable of giving someone the time and emotional support they needed. Wedded to work. Unable to trust anyone. He’d always needed to see it all, know it all, decide it all, himself—to have that total control.

  Suddenly he didn’t care about work any more. It had lost its stranglehold on him. And he didn’t want to be controlling everything for everyone all the time. He wanted a damned break.

  He’d been using work as an excuse to avoid intimacy. Using it as a vehicle to prove himself over and over again—but to whom and for what? What was he fighting so bloody hard for any more?

  Far too late he realised he’d been fighting in the wrong field of his life.

  He’d let his mother down, and the impossibility of making it up to her, the impossibility of fighting for his rights—and hers—from his father...bogged him down. He’d failed in all of that.

  I bet you were the light of her life.

  Rosanna’s words haunted him, seduced him, made him feel better. Rationally he’d always known she was right—that he’d been young, that his mother might’ve got sick anyway, that the far greater responsibility fell on the shoulders of his father.

  But believing it was harder. Rosanna had said he was like his father too. That he was too controlling. Too afraid of relinquishing control.

  Control. Discipline. Denial.

  All facets of the same stone that his heart had become. The stone weighed too heavy now and the resulting hurt was unbearable. Because Rosanna Gold was lovely. Kind. Funny. Dutiful, even when she didn’t want to be. Loyal to a fault. Even to people who’d let her down. She still tried. Indefatigably trying to do her best for others. For her students. For her damned plants and funny fish. For anyone and anything she allowed in her life. Which actually wasn’t that many people or things. Because she’d been hurt before too.

  But she’d wanted to love him. She’d tried to love him.

  And he hadn’t let her.

  He’d turned away from the light that she’d brought him. The light that she was. And now he was in darkness. Now he realised that he wanted that light—that love—more than anything. Even though he was terrified of losing it—of her taking it away, or not wanting him any more.

  So he’d not believed her. And he’d not listened to her. He’d ignored his own damn actions—and said no to her. The overprotectiveness he’d felt hadn’t been about the babies. It was about her.

  He’d done to her what his father had done to him. The thing he’d said he’d never do. He’d denied her truth—the existence of her feelings. And he’d denied his own. He’d not allowed himself to have faith in the thing he wanted most. And he’d hurt her as well as himself. It was the worst thing he could have d
one to her—when he knew that she ached inside to be seen and heard, to be valued by that one special person who paid attention and noticed the little things. To care for her the way she’d care in return. Openly, unconditionally. For always.

  He’d been so arrogant to think that his way was the only way. But there was only one thing he was certain of now. He didn’t just want Rosanna back in his life. He needed her. And he loved her. He just had to convince her of all of that... Because what if he’d hurt her too much to be forgiven?

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘ARE YOU SURE there’s nothing else I can do?’ Rosanna called to her boss as she finished watering the seedlings.

  ‘No, you head home. Thank you!’

  On her way back through the shop she couldn’t resist pausing to tweak the terrarium display. She loved that the shop sold not just plants but terrariums and aquariums as well. They were all so pretty and working amongst them inspired her.

  She glanced up as someone stalked towards her—she smiled, expecting it to be a customer. But it wasn’t a customer. It was a man she knew.

  No. Her heart stopped.

  She spoke before he had the chance to. ‘I’m at work. I can’t talk now.’

  ‘Your shift finished ten minutes ago.’

  How did he know that? Control freak.

  ‘How did you find me?’ she asked, her emotional control slipping already. ‘An investigator?’

  ‘You didn’t give me much choice.’ The faintest smile curved his mouth.

  She hardened her heart against it. But she couldn’t stop herself drinking in the sight of him. Leo Castle wasn’t in a suit. He wore loose trousers and a grey tee and looked as if he hadn’t eaten or slept in a month. Deep shadows beneath his eyes highlighted the burning over-brightness of his indigo irises. His voice was as creaky as his appearance—as if it hadn’t been properly cared for in days.

  He stared down at her, seeming to try to see right through her. ‘Rosanna.’

  Her heart pounded at the emotive whisper. She willed herself to look away from him and not be bewitched all over again, struggling to find the strength. He was here.