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“Louisa, listen?—,”

“No, I need you to listen,” she said, and she crossed the room so she could grab his face with both hands and hold him steady. “I can’t go through anything else yet. It’s too soon. Three months ago, I walked away from my life, my future, from the man I thought I was going to marry, and now he’s getting married to someone else, and I’ve been okay with everything, but this, you…if you hurt me…if this hurts me…I just don’t think I can take it.”

CHAPTER NINE

HE SAT IN HIS car and stared straight ahead, his blood pounding in a way that was new and different, as Louisa’s words replayed through his mind.

He refused to accept that this was the end.

It couldn’t be.

Everything was sogreatwith them. It had been so great, the night before. He hadlovedseeing her in his house. All he could think, as they’d eaten dinner on the terrace, was how right she seemed in the home that had been a part of his family for generations. How much he wanted to do this more.

But then, he saw her face, and he heard her plea, at the end.If this hurts me, I just don’t think I can take it.There was no way he could ignore that. She was begging him to give her time and space, she was begging him to back off. She was right about one thing—everything between them had become really serious, really fast. Without their noticing it. Case in point: the idea of having a night without seeing Louisa was anathema to Noah. That wasn’t right. Not for what they were. From the beginning, they’d expressed their limitations. He knew she was new totown, and not here permanently, and he’d been clear about his responsibilities to Taylor.

Nothing had changed, even when it all seemed so different.

He groaned into the car and slammed his palm against the steering wheel. What choice did he have? Taylor was his daughter; she came first.

But…other single parents dated. Other single parents allowed themselves to have a life of their own, too. Maybe he was doing Taylor a disservice by not giving her credit of being able to accept this? Or maybe he was wrong to make his whole existence revolve around her, setting her up with unrealistic expectations for the rest of her life?

He expelled an angry breath, took one last look at Louisa’s front door and then pulled out from the kerb. Nothing was going to be solved by sitting still. He needed to think. Or maybe he needed a second opinion.

“Fox,”the voice, as familiar to Noah as his own, came through his car speakers after three rings.

“Hey, it’s me,” Noah said, unnecessarily. “Got a sec?”

“Is everything okay?” Max Fox asked. “It’s early.”

“Shit, yeah. I forgot the time difference.” Max was over in Perth, overseeing one of the Fox family pearl farms. “Were you sleeping?”

Max laughed. “No. What’s up? All good?”

“Not exactly.”

“Is it Mum and Dad?”

“No, no.”

“Taylor.”

“No,” Noah laughed, despite the gloom of his mood. “And yes. Kind of.”

“What’s happened?”

Noah gripped the steering wheel a little more tightly, and then gave Max the discreet, PG version of events. Max listened to the whole thing, without interjecting.

Then, “So you like her?”

He thought of Louisa and something in the region of his heart panged. “Yeah.”

“Really like her?”

Noah pulled up at a set of lights and stared straight ahead. His mind was full of Louisa. “Yes, but she’s pretty adamant that it needs to stop.”

“Because you made her feel like an outsider,” Max said. “No woman you’ve been treating like a partner suddenly wants to feel like they don’t belong.”

Noah frowned. “I didn’t mean—it was just Taylor?—,”