Page 16 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

At the school, Amanda exited the car without a backwards glance.

Paige quickly opened her own door, stood there watching the young girl, waiting to see if she’d look back, but she didn’t. At the gate, Amanda simply dropped her head lower and kept walking, faster, her body language completely defensive.

Paige sighed to herself then took a seat in the car.

The drive home was filled with Reg’s chatter, but Paige only half listened. In the back of her mind, all she could think about was Max, and how stupid she’d been to let him kiss her like that. No, to basically beg him to.

His admission of celibacy had stolen all the air out of Paige’s lungs.

Had Max been so heartbroken by his wife’s death that he couldn’t imagine being with another woman? Something twisted inside Paige. Just imagining that kind of love and devotion made her yearn for something she knew to be impossible.

Love.

Real, life-altering love. She blinked rapidly, staring out at the country as it passed, the dark asphalt cutting through thick, ancient trunks.

To feel love like that you had to allow yourself to trust without limits, to be vulnerable and exposed, and Paige knew that was beyond her. Just as she couldn’t alter her features beyond recognition, she couldn’t change the parts of her personality that her childhood had brought to bear.

For a brief moment though, she found herself wishing, really wishing, that she knew how to let go of her self-protective barriers and be open to something more in life. To really connect with someone without the awful fear of betrayal, of being used, and, worst of all, being hurt.

Back at Max’s home, Paige walked into the corridor with her breath held, unconsciously looking to his study; it was empty, and it remained empty all day.

Paige, determined not to seem as though she was waiting for him, busied herself around the house. She tidied Amanda’s bedroom, then the room downstairs Amanda used for recreation, then made a batch of blueberry muffins for after-school snacks, before being drawn by the beauty of the day and a restlessness in her soul to step out into the garden. She was halfway through the psychology book on teens and she brought it with her, choosing a sunny seat on the edge of the grass and reading until an alarm on her watch told her it was time to go and collect Amanda.

Right on cue, Reg appeared in his four-wheel drive.

Without taking the time to replace the book in the house, she moved to the car, swung into the front passenger seat and offered a smile to Reg that she hoped concealed the turmoil of her thoughts.

‘You’re burned,’ he said with a nod.

‘Oh...’ She looked at her arms, which were indeed a little pink. ‘So I am.’

‘The sun’s a shocker out this way. You need to wear sleeves.’

Reg’s own skin was leathery, turned that way from a distinct lack of sleeve wearing, she suspected. ‘Next time,’ she said with a nod.

As they were approaching the school, Paige pointed towards a park at the end of the street. ‘Would you mind parking down here? I’m going to wait for Amanda over there.’

Reg pulled into the kerb but gave Paige a dubious look.

‘I’m not sure she’ll like that. She always makes me stay in the car.’

‘I know,’ she said, with more confidence than she felt. ‘But I’d like to take a quick peek.’

She was more nervous than she conveyed but it was imperative to see what was happening at school, to observe Amanda’s demeanour as she left. However, she kept Amanda’s missive in mind and waited just outside the gate, rather than stepping inside. She wanted to respect the girl’s boundaries while also doing her job, and so she stood, and she watched as the crowds filled the school yard and began to filter through the gates and, finally, she saw Amanda.

She emerged from an undercover walkway with her head bent, walking completely alone. Her backpack was slung over one shoulder. A small group of girls walked a little way behind her, not making fun of Amanda in any way, but nor was the group including her. Amanda looked incredibly tiny and very solitary.

Paige had once been a young girl herself, and though, to the rest of the world, it might have seemed that she had everything one could ever want, in fact her life had been a constant merry-go-round of needing to keep up. It didn’t matter that she’d had stylists at her fingertips, she’d still never felt quite good enough, which was, she knew, the prerogative of almost teenagers the world over. It could be an incredibly demoralising time.

Trying to keep up was futile and silly. Happiness and self-confidence had to come from within. At the same time, though, it quickly became clear to Paige that Amanda was an outlier to these girls, that her shoes were different, her bag was different.

There was nothing wrong with different if that was a personal choice, but, looking at Amanda, Paige wasn’t clear on exactly how much of this had been Amanda’s choosing and how much was circumstance.

Her brow furrowed. It didn’t make sense that she wouldn’t, materially, have whatever she wanted. Max Stone’s personal wealth was famously extraordinary. Though he kept a low profile, the Stone family owned and operated one of the most prestigious groups of jewellery stores in the world, supplied with their stunning pearls, as well as exquisite diamonds. They were synonymous with wealth and luxury. Beyond that, she remembered reading some article before coming to Australia about their investments in real estate and knew that their portfolio was quite incredible.

So if Amanda wanted different shoes, surely that wouldn’t have been an issue?

Paige stood a little straighter, stepped forward, and the shift in movement caused Amanda—as well as a couple of the other girls—to look in her direction. Amanda’s face fell immediately and then one of the group moved closer to her, said something under her breath, laughed and returned to her friends.

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