Page 30 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

‘Yes?’ He could no longer avoid the conversation. He looked right at Amanda.

‘It’s okay, Amanda.’ Paige offered the young girl a smile.

‘You’ll show Paige the attic, won’t you?’

Finally, he looked at Paige, because he had no choice, and something in his soul ignited. Her lips parted, his gaze dropped briefly and he felt as though he were losing a part of himself. He was terrified by how much he wanted her and how much he’d been thinking of her, he was, if he was honest, terrified of what he’d felt when they’d made love. He’d been trying to rationalise it away as overwhelming because of his celibacy but with one single glance something rolled in his chest that made a mockery of all those very sensible explanations.

He was falling from a great height; disaster was unavoidable.

‘Dad?’ Amanda’s voice was sharp.

The ground was rushing up at him; crashing was inevitable. ‘Yes.’ The word was louder than he’d meant. He cleared his throat, shrugged as if he weren’t making some kind of a deal with the devil. ‘If Paige wants to see it, sure.’

‘You don’t have to do this,’ Paige muttered as they ascended the final, narrow staircase towards the now infamous attic.

‘It’s fine. Let’s just get it over with.’

What had she been expecting? Roses? An invitation on a date? What was wrong with her? Paige was usually the one avoiding commitment like the plague. Why was she upset by the way he was distancing himself from her when she didn’t even want more from him?

Paige blinked quickly, hating that her emotions were so close to the surface, hating the tears that threatened to spill over. But everything had felt so good before dinner. She’d been reflecting on how great it was to have achieved so much with Amanda, to have had such a breakthrough, and as for Max... Her heart stitched painfully. What they’d shared had been...life changing. Not because she expected more from him, but because in that moment, when she’d been feeling lower than low, when her past had rushed up to her and threatened to swallow her whole, he’d found the perfect way to draw her to the present and to remind her of who she was, and it had been a beautiful gift she’d wanted to cherish for ever.

She’d expected him to have some issues with it, because of his late wife, but she hadn’t been prepared for him to show up at dinner and treat her like some kind of pariah.

‘After you,’ he said at the top of the stairs, pushing an old timber door inward. It creaked a little, the noise spooky. It was not well lit—a single light bulb dangled from a long white cord in the middle of the room. Paige hesitated a moment before crossing the threshold, her arm brushing Max’s as she went, so she was grateful it was too dim for him to see the goosebumps that lifted over her skin.

She could see why Amanda had insisted she come up here. She was distracted enough by the beauty of the space to remark, ‘Oh, wow. It’s amazing.’

She stepped deeper into the room and it felt as though she were slipping back through time. Despite the fact the house hadn’t operated as a hotel for decades, several single beds, wrought iron with brass knobs, were lined up along the wall, reminding Paige of an old-fashioned orphanage. The room though was huge—Amanda had been right, it clearly spanned the whole house, but there were no internal walls. All the furniture was old-fashioned: a leather armchair, a big, wide desk, a wardrobe with a mirror—this one put Paige in mind of The Chronicles of Narnia. It was like something out of a dream.

‘I can feel them,’ she said, lifting her fingers to her lips.

‘Who?’ Max was close, just a step behind her. She turned quickly, blinked, then it was Paige who took a step away, because the temptation to reach out and touch him was too great and she was worried she wouldn’t be able to control herself—and he clearly didn’t want anything to do with her, despite what they’d shared only hours earlier.

‘Them,’ she said unevenly, clearing her throat. ‘The people who used to live here.’

His smile pulled pinpricks at her heart because it was so unexpected. ‘A hundred or so years ago?’

‘Sure, why not?’ She moved deeper into the room, glad for the reprieve of space, running a finger over a dusty beam. ‘I wonder what their lives were like.’

‘Stinking hot, I’d imagine.’

She shot him an arch look. ‘Can’t you play along, just for a moment?’

‘I see a heap of old junk that should have been got rid of years ago.’

That offended every cell in Paige’s body. ‘You can’t be serious?’

‘It’s just furniture.’

‘No, it’s so much more.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s the physical manifestation of times gone by. It’s beds that were slept in by people with dreams and hopes, who’d lie here at night and look through the skylights and say their prayers for whatever wishes were in their hearts. It’s lives lived and woven into the fabric of time. It’s history, Max,’ she said, breathlessly. ‘Can’t you feel—?’

‘No.’ The single word was harsher than it needed to be, hissed between his teeth, and Paige realised belatedly that in her desire to convince him of this magic, she’d moved towards him, close enough to reach out and touch, again. That hadn’t been her intention. She’d just wanted him to see...

‘It’s just furniture,’ he said again, as if to push the conversation firmly to the side. Pragmatic and unfeeling. Except he wasn’t either of those things. On the surface, perhaps, but Paige had glimpsed more, she’d seen deeper.

‘Max—’ She didn’t know what she’d been going to say and never found out because at that moment the light bulb dangling in the middle of the room went out, plunging them into complete darkness, and the ghosts of those people were suddenly all around them. ‘Oh, my God,’ she gasped, moving unconsciously closer to Max, needing to feel him for a different reason now.

She heard his rough exhalation, and the strong, muscled arm that clamped around her back was supposed to be reassuring but it made her body tingle as awareness jolted through her.

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