This was not a lie. She’d been so excited, she’d tackled him with such force they’d both fallen to the floor which, at first, considering she’d knocked the wind out of him, he thought was disadvantageous. Then, as he got his breath back and realized she was kissing and touching every inch of him she could get her hands and mouth on, and they were horizontal, Prentice saw the advantages of the situation.
Austin interrupted Prentice’s train of thought. “Isabella and I are leaving today, going back to Chicago. She’ll finish her senior year at Northwestern and she won’t return.”
Prentice glared at him. No, he could not believe this bloke.
“It’s my understanding her plans have changed,” Prentice replied.
“I’m quite certain you’ll eventually be happy with a woman who has not accomplished a higher education, however, my daughter –” Austin went on.
Prentice cut him off. “No, I’ll be quite happy with whatever Elle wants to do. And she’s decided she’ll finish uni but, after she graduates, she’ll come back here.”
Austin smiled a humorless, condescending smile. “And what, for the sake of curiosity, could she possibly do here?”
Prentice’s anger escalated.
He’d been born in his village, as had his father and mother and their parents and their parents, for as far back as anyone could remember. It wasn’t cosmopolitan by a long shot but it had charm and it was filled with good people who looked out for each other.
Furthermore, Elle loved it there. He knew that not only because she acted like she loved it but because she’d told him she loved it, about ten thousand times.
Prentice didn’t like anything about this discussion and he was beginning to like it even less.
“We’re in Scotland, not the wilds Nairobi,” Prentice returned. “We have trains. We even have cars. She can do whatever she wants.”
“It would be quite a commute to any worthwhile employment,” Austin retorted disdainfully.
“That depends on your definition of ‘worthwhile’,” Prentice shot back.
Austin rocked back on his heels, crossing his arms on his chest.
“It does, indeed,” he replied as if he’d made a point.
Prentice was done.
He looked back at Elle.
She was again studying the carpet.
“You want to jump in here, baby?” Prentice asked softly and he felt Austin’s mood shift dangerously at his tone and, likely, his endearment.
Prentice ignored it.
Her eyes lifted to his.
Prentice felt a chill slide through him when her gaze locked on his.
She stood, slowly, lithely, the graceful way she moved was one of the things that first attracted Prentice to her. Even her incessant fidgeting looked like a beautiful dance.
She walked the four feet to where he stood in front of the fireplace and stopped not far but also not close.
She tipped her head back to look at him.
“This was a mistake,” she said in that cultured, controlled voice.
Prentice thought she was not wrong.
He’d spent every moment he could with her for two summers. When she was back at home at uni, they talked on the phone as often as they could, considering the time difference and the expense (which wasn’t often enough for either of them). She wrote him letters and he did the same. She sent him packages filled with cookies she’d baked (at first these had arrived in crumbles and she’d made it her mission to find a way to get them to him with the cookies intact, eventually wrapping each cookie, dozens of them, tightly in cling film) and mad, ridiculous gifts she’d pick up here and there that she told him he “had to have” because they reminded her of him. Prentice had seven Northwestern t-shirts and three sweatshirts and even a pair of sweatpants that had a small Northwestern insignia on the hip.
It was safe to say Elle thought of him often.