across his chest. He couldn’t take any credit for the little girl he’d only seen once, but he was already counting down the weeks until their next agreed visit.
Lacey’s fingers drummed against his desktop. “Have you met her?”
“Just once. She and Sabine are overseas for the rowing world champs at the moment.”
“How is Sabine?”
He didn’t want any more secrets. No even small ones. Not even ones that didn’t even matter. Not when he and Peter were the product of his parents keeping secrets for thirty years. “I asked her to marry me.”
Lacey visibly flinched and stepped back. “Oh. Well,” she forced a smile on her face. “Congratulations.”
Victor stepped forward. Stopping when their bodies were close, but not touching, barely keeping hold of the desire to touch her. “Lace, she said no.”
Her brow furrowed. “Is she with someone else?”
“No. But she’s not interested in a man who’s crazy in love with someone else. I stupidly thought that asking her to marry me was a way to make things right. To do the right thing for her and Peyton. But, as she pointed out, she deserves to be with someone who can love her with his whole heart. And that person isn’t me. Because my heart is yours. And it would appear I’m not going to be getting it back anytime soon.”
Lacey drew in a deep breath. “I—”
Victor held up a finger. “Can you hold that thought for just one second, please. Stay there.”
He grabbed a pen off his desk, paper off his printer, and scrawled his signature on the bottom of the page. “I wasn’t sure who this should go to, but now that you’re here, I figure you can make sure it gets to the right place.”
Lacey looked down at the letter in her hand. “You’re resigning?” Her face gave nothing away. Still, he knew it was the right decision.
“I think technically, as of two seconds ago, I’ve resigned.”
“Do you have another job?”
“No. But I’ll find one.” He’d applied for twelve in the last two weeks. He figured if he applied for enough jobs, he’d have to get one, just through the rules of statistical probability.
“What about Peyton? What about doing the right thing by her?”
“I’m going to do the right thing by her. I’m going to get another job. I’m going to support her and her mum. I’m going to be in her life. But that job doesn’t need to be here. And quite frankly, turns out being in love with the CEO is really not ideal, so it’s better for the company if I find something somewhere else.”
Lacey closed her eyes for a second. It was everything he could do not to run his hands up her arms and tangle them in her hair. But he couldn’t. Because only a few meters away, an entire office full of people watched them. Even though he’d resigned, anything between them would create gossip she didn’t deserve.
“I thought I could do this, Lace. I thought I could stay here and be your biggest advocate and help you build a great company, but I can’t. There is too much going on. With Peyton and Sabine, with Peter and me. To do right by that, by them, to do my part in fixing all of this, I also can’t be here, trying to get over the only woman I’ve ever loved who also happens to be my boss’s boss’s boss. There’s only so much therapy a guy can afford.”
Lacey could see Victor’s restraint as clearly as if a stunt plane had written in the air between them. She glanced toward the window. At least four people had given up any pretense of working and were staring at them with naked speculation.
The Lacey of three months ago would leave now, before she did any more damage to her reputation. Though it was already too late. It had been too late as soon as she’d walked into his office and inadvertently turned it into a stage. So she might as well put them all out of their misery. Including her. But most of all him. The man she loved.
She held up a finger, mimicking Victor’s action of a couple of minutes ago. “Can you give me one second?”
She walked to the door and opened it, looking for the blonde guy who had shown her to Victor’s office. “Sean?”
He scuttled forward. “Yes, ma’am. Ms. O’Connor, ma’am.”
“Can I borrow a pen, please?”
He immediately pulled one out of his breast pocket.
Leaning against the wall, she scribbled a sentence