Page 111 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“How am I going to tell Mum?” I whispered.

Hazel pulled a loose thread from her mittens with her teeth. “Not going to sugarcoat it for you, it’s going to be rough.”

I whimpered.

“But we’ll do it together.”

“She…she’ll be okay, right?”

That made her snort. “Don’t be such a drama queen. Of course she will.”

She held out a hand and, when I took it, pulled me to my feet. We made our way back to the road, heading for Oldshoremore through the last shreds of the afternoon light.

“Hazel,” I said, a few minutes later.

“Yes?”

“You know…you know I didn’t do it, didn’t let him get to me, I mean, because I was looking for…looking for something I didn’t think I had?”

A slight tilt of her head in my direction. “Then why did you?”

“Well, partly because, as you’ve pointed out, he’s a manipulative motherfucker. But mainly because I thought knowing who he was might help me know more about who I am.”

“Did it?”

“No.” A gust of wind came howling round the hillside, almost knocking me into Hazel. I grit my teeth against the icy blast of it, but it rushed through me all the same, sweeping clean the corners of me, and unfurling my clenched-up little heart like a flag. “He’s nobody to me. I’m Mum’s. And…yours and Rabbie’s.”

“Damn straight, kid.”

Hazel’s nose had gone pink, but maybe it was the cold. Then she slipped her arm through mine and we walked the rest of the way in silence, the crooked chimney of our cottage just visible against the darkening skyline—that ever-familiar finger beckoning us home.

Chapter 37

As ever, Hazel was right: Telling Mum was rough. But we got through it. To be honest, she probably handled it best of all of us. Rabbie was worried, which meant he started pacing, and the cottage wasn’t built to handle someone as big as Rabbie pacing, and Hazel was angry—though not at anyone present—and ended up breaking a plate in the general commotion, and I sat on the sofa, being incoherent and crying a lot. And it was while all this was going on that Mum signed the divorce papers. Later, though, we sat on the bed under the eaves, wrapped in one of her quilts, and Mum held me like she hadn’t needed to since I was little. We stayed up way too late, whispering to each other in the half-made-up language neither of us could remember inventing, and Hazel just closed the door quietly behind us, and didn’t even scold us for not getting enough sleep. And the next day—after slightly subdued pancakes—Rabbie drove me all the way to Edinburgh, so that nearly wrecking my family didn’t take too many days from my job.

I got back to London by early afternoon, in a better state than when I’d left, but still possessed of a strong desire to pitch myself face-first into bed and not move for a good long time. First, though, I dropped the signed papers off at Gisbourne, Finesilver & King, then shambled back onto the Tube and off it again at Bank, arriving at Caspian’s building when it was actually open for once. I still had to get the receptionist to phone his executive assistant before they let me into the lift, but it was better than having to run through car parks and take on security guards.

Caspian, of course, was in meetings, which I’d been expecting. I asked if I could wait, braving subtle discouragement from The Woman Who Was Not Bellerose, and was directed to a sofa. I probably looked terribly out of place, sitting there in clothes that hadn’t been much to write home about before I’d travelled twelve thousand miles in them, while workers and visitors alike passed to and fro in exquisitely cut suits.

An hour or so later, I was allowed into Caspian’s office. He was in dark blue, stark and unalleviated but for the glimmer of a white shirt at collar and cuffs. It was a look that emphasised the remoter aspects of his beauty—his icy eyes, the graven symmetry of his face—and made me feel especially bedraggled.

“Arden.” He stepped swiftly from behind the desk and came towards me. “Are you all right?”

“Yes. Everything’s been taken care of.”

“I’m glad.”

He was smiling down at me and I found myself smiling back, hopelessly dizzy on the sudden softness of his mouth, the familiar scent of his cologne, the way the generosity of his lashes gentled his eyes. “I came to say thank you. And also sorry.”

“You owe me neither apologies nor gratitude.”

“Well, you’re getting both. You saved my family.”

And there it was—that sweep of pink across his cheeks. “You know, I thought only of you.”

“Then”—I held his gaze as steadily as I could—“thank you. For thinking of me.”

“I’m always thinking of you, my Arden.”