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He grasped her fingers. “Philip. Maybe one day you can convince my son to forgive me.”
She squeezed his hand before letting go. “I hope he does—for his sake more than yours.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Whywasn’tNathalieansweringher phone?
Ryder dropped his wallet and mobile on the kitchen counter in his flat and ripped off his sweat and rain-soaked t-shirt, courtesy of his morning run.
He shook his head, disgusted with himself. He’d been blowing up her mobile like a lovesick lad. If she didn’t call him back by fourteen hundred his time, he’d ring her office and make sure nothing was wrong.
He wanted to be back in the States.
Back in Nathalie’s bed.
Not stuck here in London trying to get his affairs in order and keep his promise to Lachlan that he’d find a suitable space for Dìleas’s European office.
In a building not owned by Arborleigh Holdings.
His skin felt itchy, his sixth sense sandpaper across his nerves. Something was off. Nathalie had been evasive over the past couple of weeks on the phone. He’d tried to dismiss it because she seemed in such good spirits.
But she was hiding something.
Had she changed her mind about their relationship?
Fuck.He stopped pacing the confines of his living room and bent at the waist, gripping his knees as he sucked in air.
She wouldn’t do that to him again.
He’d never survive it.
His mobile chirped with an incoming text. He lunged for it, knocking an open bag of crisps to the floor.
Meet me at the Oxford Botanic Garden, Autumn Border, noon.
Nathalie was in London?
Why hadn’t she told him she was coming?
His pulse hammered as he stared at the words, trying to divine the subtext beneath the single sentence. He hadn’t returned to the gardens since the day he planned to propose to her.
It took an hour and forty-five minutes by car to get to Oxford and it was already ten a.m. He bolted down the hall to his bedroom.
Fifteen minutes to shower, change, and—he glanced at the night table beside his bed as he stripped—make sure he had everything he needed.
He made it in an hour and thirty-five. Stepping out of the car park, Ryder opened his umbrella against the drizzle of rain and proceeded to Danby Gate. Heavy clouds blanketed the sky, and according to the weather app on his phone, it was fourteen degrees Celsius.
In other words, a typical late autumn day in England.
His boots crunched on the pebbled walkway as he headed to the Lower Garden. The visitors this morning were sparse. He greeted an older couple who were admiring the drops of rain pattering the leaves in the waterlily pond.
Down the path to the Autumn Border, the figure of a woman in a bright yellow trench coat stood beneath an umbrella, its green watercolor garden print bringing a smile to his lips despite the frantic thudding of his heart.
Nathalie stood out in a vivid splash of color on a gray, rainy day, standing next to the fading blooms of plants a month past their heyday of beauty.
She appeared deep in thought.
He made sure his footsteps made noise so as not to startle her.