Page 203 of Boss of the Year

Over me.

We stared at each other, gasping hard enough that our breaths erupted in plumes through the air between us. The pain in Lucas’s voice, the sheer desperation, combined with all thatI’d been carrying alone for the past months, broke something open inside me.

The dam broke, and my tears flooded everything else.

“Oh, God.” Lucas stepped forward, hands out, like he wanted to take me, stop me, hold me, who knew?

My body shook with the force of my emotions. I keened.

“Sweetheart. Fuck,no.”

And then his arms were around me, like he physically couldn’t keep himself from gathering me against his broad chest and cradling my head while he stroked my hair, hummed into my ear, and absorbed one of the many sobs that wracked my entire body.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered again and again. “Fuck, I’m so sorry, baby. My sweet Marie. I’m here to fix it, I promise. I’ll get on my knees. Follow you like a dog. That’s why I’m here, don’t you understand? Here to do whatever it takes to make it right.”

“B-but there’s—there’s n-nothing to do, Lucas.” The tears kept coming, but slower now, tempered by his touch and the utterly addictive scent of him that I’d never quite been able to get out of my nose.

His hands slipped to the sides of my face, and he tilted my head back so I was forced to look up at him, to see the remorse that seemed to consume him as much as my pain consumed me.

“What do you need?” he asked in a voice so gentle, it might have been the wind. “Is it still Daniel you want? Because if it is, if that’s what you really want—fuck—I’ll make it happen. I’ll arrange his divorce. I’ll undo it all, I swear it. I will cart him back to France, send him through a year of rehab, and I willmakemy brother be good to you if it’s the last fucking thing I do. I don’t care if you choose me, Marie. I just want you to be happy.”

I blinked up at him, hardly believing what I was hearing. “I…he didn’t tell you?”

Lucas’s brow furrowed as he searched my face. “Tell me what?”

I took a shaky breath, tasting salt on my lips. Through the trees, the river gurgled on the bank below.

“I had lunch with Daniel before I left for France. He wanted to apologize, to explain about Emma and the wedding. And I told him—” I gave a waterlogged laugh. “I said I was never in love with him. Not really. Just like I told you, I was in love with the fantasy I’d built up in my head. The real Daniel is…well, he is who he is. But he’s not the man for me.”

Lucas stared at me, like he couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

“I don’t want anything from him,” I continued, the words coming easier now. “From any of your family. Not from you either. Because people can exist without wantingthingsfrom each other, Lucas. They can just be in each other’s lives. Live for the kindness. For the good moments. Help each other. Even—” My breath caught. “Even love each other.”

Ever-so-gently, his thumbs traced my cheekbones. “Love?”

My breath came out in a shudder, but I nodded. “That’s all I ever wanted from you anyway.”

Lucas was quiet for so long that I wondered if he had actually heard me. When he spoke, his voice was barely a whisper.

“God, if that were true.”

He kissed me then, fierce and desperate. My hands fisted in his sweater as I kissed him back, even as new tears streamed down my cheeks. He seemed to sip at them as they fell, his mouth feathering across my face before returning to my mouth as he backed me off the path, under the cover of a massive willow tree.

“You want me to love you, sweet Marie?” he asked as his hands gripped the folds of my skirt. “Well, I do, baby. I love youso much, I can’t breathe without you. I’ve been walking through life like a ghost since I returned to that empty room.”

I gasped as he lifted me, encouraging my legs to wrap around his waist as he kissed me again. The layers of clothes didn’t matter as he pinned me against the tree, holding me to its solid trunk, grounding me down to its roots.

“I told myself I’d give you time,” he murmured as his erection found my core through denim and cotton. “I’d wait until you were ready. Until you missed me. Until you asked me back into your life.” His voice cracked. “But you didn’t.”

He rocked against me as wind whistled through the trees.

My throat burned, my hands twining around his neck, fingers through his hair. “Lucas?—”

“I couldn’t stay away,” he said, eyes locking with mine, wide and wild. “I needed to see you. Toknow. You said I didn’t have a right to you anymore, but that doesn’t change a fucking thing in here.” One of his broad, capable hands flattened over my chest, just above my heart.

The simple gesture nearly cut that heart in two.

I needed to be closer. Even pinned here, with the weight of his body trapping me against the tree, it wasn’t enough. Hurriedly, I reached between us, my fingers finding the button of his jeans. They trembled—not from hesitation, but from the weight of what I was allowing myself to feel.