An Act of Persuasion - By Stephanie Doyle Page 0,8

that she knew now how he truly felt.

The truth was the treatment he chose for himself might kill him. Was she supposed to stay and watch that?

Was she supposed to sit like a good girl while she was abandoned? Again.

No. She wouldn’t do it.

She needed to leave him before her heart bled out into her chest after being crushed so thoroughly. And she died alongside him. That’s the thought she had to cling to.

She wasn’t leaving Ben, she was saving herself.

“Fine,” she said, calling on every ounce of strength she had to do what needed to be done. “It just happened. You need to be dropped off at the hospital. I understand perfectly. I’ll make sure the glass gets cleaned up. Stay away from it in the meantime.”

“Anna—”

“No,” she said, holding her hand up. “I control what we get to talk about from now on and I don’t want to discuss this any longer.”

He didn’t like that, she could see it in his expression.

He sneered then, not content to let her have the last say on the matter. “I was only going to say...you throw like a girl.”

“Screw you,” she fired back. “Oh, wait. I already did.”

CHAPTER THREE

Present day

SHE WAS HERE. The deep satisfaction he felt as he watched her walk through the country club room where they were hosting the party was intense. Ben stood on the balcony talking to one of his clients. And without turning his head, he knew the instant she’d arrived.

He wouldn’t suggest anything so melodramatic as to say he could intuit her presence. But he wouldn’t discount his body’s response to her arrival. His muscles tightened, his heart rate accelerated.

It had been twelve weeks since he’d last seen her. Three months since he’d heard her voice. The fact that he knew down to the minute when she’d last spoken to him—shouted at him actually—was appalling. It was a sign he wasn’t busy enough. He would think about resuming a more normal working schedule now that he was finally back on his feet.

“I heard it was a close thing.”

Ben stared at the short balding man he’d invited to the party, which was in part a celebration as well as a goodbye. Madeleine Kane, one of his employees and dearest friends, was leaving Philadelphia to join her fiancé, Michael Langdon, in Detroit. While she would still work for the Tyler Group as a political consultant, she would no longer be in the office on a regular basis. Ben thought it fitting to send her off with the well-wishes of her colleagues and a few high-profile clients.

Stan Butterman was one of those clients.

“I mean, word was you were on death’s door.”

Ben despised euphemisms. They trivialized what was never trivial. “I was sick, but I’m doing much better now.”

And he was. Where the first round of induction chemo had failed to put his cancer in remission, the second round of treatment killed off the cancer cells completely. The stem cell transplantation, while risky, had worked to rebuild his immune system. His red and white blood cell counts were normal, and there were no signs of his body rejecting the foreign cells.

He still fought fatigue like it was a mortal enemy, but in the past twelve weeks since undergoing the treatment, he’d put on weight and had managed a limited strength-building exercise routine. It was starting to make a difference. Now he could go hours without needing to rest.

“Well, you’re looking good. Even see your hair coming back. Not like mine, huh? Maybe I need some chemo to go the other way.” Stan rubbed his bald head and laughed while Ben smiled politely.

Yes, of course, let’s laugh about chemo together.

But Stan was right, there was hair on Ben’s head where there hadn’t been before, even if it was just a buzz of it. He’d lost most of his hair after the first round of treatment, but the second round had left him completely bald. Everywhere, including his chest and other areas of his body where he’d never really concerned himself with not having hair before.

It had pleased him to see all the hairy parts of his body returning to normal. He considered it a sign of regrowth. A return to normalcy.

“When do you plan to be back in the office full time?”

“Soon. After weeks of quarantine I’m a little stir crazy. I’m ready for something more challenging than a trip to the drugstore.”

“I bet. I mean a guy like you, former CIA agent turned into an invalid. You must