Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,136
He held out the hand not holding on to his towel in a placating gesture. It didn’t work.
“You think?” I asked. “And don’t call me ‘darling.’”
“You can’t actually believe that I came all this way just to manipulate you into returning to Boston to seal the deal with Severin,” he said.
“Can’t I?” I asked. My voice broke, which made me furious. “You. Lied. To. Me.”
I didn’t wait to hear another word from him. I shoved my feet into my sandals and stormed from his house, slamming the door behind me.
It was midmorning; the grounds of the vineyard were already swarming with tourists for the wine festival. I kept my head down as hot tears scalded my face.
My usually carefully contained emotions had kicked the basement door open and were now raging through me, smashing everything in reach. My heart was pounding. My hands were sweating. I was having a hard time breathing, and I desperately wanted to go find a quiet, dark corner to curl up in so I could cry myself dry in peace.
How could I have been so stupid? What if this whole thing from day one was just Jason using me to get to Severin? What if he hadn’t meant what he’d said last night? What if he didn’t love me? I sobbed. What if I lost my job over this? My career? Everything? It hit me, a straight shot to the heart, that of all the things I stood to lose, losing his love hurt the worst.
“Chelsea, wait!”
I glanced over my shoulder. My eyes went wide. Jason was coming after me, wearing only his towel and a pair of sneakers. I blinked as the morning sun glistened on his muscular frame, and I heard a woman nearby sigh, “Oh my.”
Exactly! The man was not going to charm me again! I ducked into the rose garden adjacent to the castle. There were several tourists in here as well, but I ignored them in my quest for escape. I had just cleared the opposite archway and was in front of the main entrance when Jason caught me by the arm.
“Chelsea, wait,” he said. He was panting. “You have to let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” I cried. My own breath was short as I turned away from him. “I get it. I get all of it.”
The sight of him hurt too much. His dark hair was disheveled, his blue-gray eyes were swirls of both colors, he had trimmed the scruff on his chin, and the only thing between him and complete nudity was the fist that held the towel presently wrapped around his hips. Well, that and his black Converse sneakers, the sight of which perversely made me want to cry even harder.
We were drawing a crowd—not a surprise—but I found I didn’t even care. Let everyone see how callously I’d been used. What was a little humiliation on top of such a betrayal?
“Yes, I lied to you,” Jason cried in exasperation.
With a gasp, I turned to face him, ignoring the murmurs of the crowd surrounding us. “You admit it?”
“Of course I admit it,” he said. He shoved one hand through his hair. “You were about to make the biggest mistake of your life—” He bit off his words, glanced past me, and said, “No offense, Marcellino.”
I looked over my shoulder and saw Marcellino standing amid several staff members, clearly preparing for the second day of the wine festival. They all looked quite bemused, even Marcellino, who said, “None taken.”
“Yes, I lied to you about Severin coming here,” Jason continued. “I had to. We need you in Boston, Chelsea, raising money to fight the good fight and helping to save lives. It’s who you are, it’s what you’re good at, and it’s where you belong.”
“So you lied to get me to go back to work for the ACC?” I asked. It shouldn’t have stung so much that his primary motivation was work, but it did.
“Yes . . . no. Nothing at the office was the same after you left,” he said. “When Aidan sent me to Paris to find you, I couldn’t wait to get there, because I knew I was already half in love with you. When we kissed on the top of the Eiffel Tower, you finished me off for good. You said you went on this quest to find yourself, but you didn’t need to go away to find yourself, Chelsea. You needed to go away so that I could find you.” He paused, and