Page 73 of The Rancher's Wedding Deception

Enough.

Paul canceled his afternoon meetings, ignored his assistant’s barely concealed surprise, and had Butch bring the car around.

“Where to, sir?”

“The Bernard estate.”

If she would not come to him, he would go to her.

And then he would make her understand exactly what happened to women who made Paul Mitropoulos wait.

The drive to Tranquil Acres took forty minutes in midday traffic. December had dressed San Antonio in its holiday finest—wreaths on lampposts, lights strung between buildings, and a massive tree visible through the windows of the Rivercenter Mall.

But Paul noticed none of this, with his gaze fixed on the partition separating him from Butch, his fingers drumming an impatient rhythm against his thigh.

The Bernard mansion rose behind its iron gates like a widow in mourning, all that grandeur somehow diminished without Joyce’s theatrical presence to animate it. The garlands on the gate looked wilted. The white lights that had twinkled so prettily two nights ago were dark, waiting for evening.

He didn’t wait for Butch to open his door.

Except—

“She’s not here, Mr. Mitropoulos.”

Paul’s disbelief warred with outrage as Joyce’s new cook nervously relayed to him about Andromeda leaving shortly after breakfast on foot, with a packed lunch she had prepared for herself.

“Did she say where she was going?”

“No, sir.”

Paul curtly thanked the older woman for her time and considered his next move. Since she had gone out on foot with a packed lunch, she had to be somewhere nearby.

Right?

It took a while, but Paul eventually found Andromeda at a small public park beyond the walls of her aunt’s gated community.

It was he kind of place that existed in every suburb across America—a few acres of grass, a duck pond, a playground with swings and a slide, wooden benches scattered along winding paths. The winty air had driven most people indoors, but a handful of mothers huddled near the playground, watching bundled toddlers navigate the equipment with the exaggerated caution of astronauts on a foreign planet.

And there, on a bench facing the pond, sat the girl that had been living in his mind rent-free since his first taste of her lips.

Damn her.

Paul found himself gritting his teeth as he observed how relaxed she looked, seated on that wooden bench while eating her sandwich.

She’d made herself a picnic.

An actual picnic, complete with what appeared to be a peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in wax paper, an apple, and a thermos that she periodically raised to her lips. Beside her on the bench sat a paperback book—something with a colorful cover he couldn’t quite make out from this distance—its pages ruffling gently in the breeze.

She looked like a painting. Like someone had captured the essence of simple contentment and given it human form.

Damn her.

She was all he could think about since morning. But here she was, looking like she hadn’t a care in the world...even though they both fucking knew Joyce had to have ordered her to keep him entertained.

His badly dented ego was adamant that he should just fucking walk away and forget that she even existed.

But...instead he ended up observing her like a lovesick fool...or stalking her like someone with a crazy obsession.

He stayed in the car. Told himself it was strategy—that he was gathering intelligence, learning her patterns, waiting for the right moment to approach. Told himself all the lies a man tells himself when he’s doing something he knows he shouldn’t.