Page 43 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

Something about Amanda was different though.

She was sweet, and hurt, and vulnerable, and Paige had needed to work hard to really tighten a bond with her, to earn Amanda’s trust. But it was more than that.

When Paige looked at Amanda, she saw Max as well. His eyes, his stubborn temperament, his strength. She saw so many of the traits that were also in Max and those traits made her feel... She searched for the right word, shaking her head, exasperated when she couldn’t properly untangle her emotions. Only she knew she did feel something, and that alone was anathema to her approach to life.

If she didn’t care about Max, his lack of consideration of Paige’s feelings wouldn’t have rankled so much. But she did care, so it did hurt like hell.

With a soft groan, she spun to move inside, right as Max appeared at the wide French doors, stepping out onto the small balcony. His expression was impossible to misinterpret, his features locked in a mask that showed irritation and impatience, his eyes holding a warning. Paige, in the midst of desperately trying to fathom her own reactions, wished he would disappear again. It was all too much—the sense of overwhelm was huge.

‘You’re home?’

‘We’ve been home twenty minutes. Amanda’s asleep.’

Paige blinked. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’

‘Obviously.’

‘Why didn’t you come and get me? I would have liked to see Amanda. To say goodnight to her.’

‘To take refuge in your duties to her, you mean? To hide from me again?’

Paige felt as though she’d been shocked with live voltage. ‘I didn’t—I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘Come on, Paige. It’s just the two of us now. Be honest with me. Why are you avoiding me?’

‘I’m just doing my job,’ she pointed out, the ground beneath her unsteady, because his accusation was justified and she didn’t think it would be possible to explain what she was feeling without revealing something important—to herself, and him. She needed space to work out what was going on, damn it.

‘You were doing your job back in Australia too,’ he pointed out huskily, ‘but you were also available to me.’

‘Available to you?’ she repeated, his choice of phrasing rubbing her completely the wrong way.

Something shifted in his eyes. Doubt? Uncertainty? Remorse? But it disappeared again quickly, the emotion replaced with arrogant certainty. ‘We were both available to each other,’ he conceded, arms crossed over his chest. ‘What’s changed?’

She turned away from him, staring out at the view, the beauty of the setting at odds with the turmoil inside her.

Realisations were coming at Paige like a runaway train and she couldn’t move out of its path. Her head was spinning. She wanted to curl up under a rock, to run away and hide.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she muttered.

‘Oh, yeah?’

She did her best to feign innocence. ‘Have I done something wrong with Amanda?’

‘This isn’t about—God, this isn’t a job evaluation, Paige. I’m not talking about Amanda. I’m talking about us.’

Us. The train was screeching closer, the lights blinding, the clarity so close Paige could almost reach out and grab it, comprehension of her deepest feelings within grasp. But whenever she felt as if she was coming to understand herself, something shifted, morphed, so she no longer knew what she was feeling.

But the word ‘us’ sparked danger in her blood. She wasn’t a part of an ‘us’, she never had been and she didn’t ever intend to be.

‘I think we’ve made a mistake,’ she said slowly, but with firm resolve. ‘Amanda has to be our priority.’

‘She is our priority. I’m not criticising the way you are with her.’

Paige swallowed past a throat that seemed lined with razor blades. Everything was wrong. Flashes of their time together blinded Paige, bursting into her consciousness.

She’d been so confident—arrogant—assured that she could control this, and all the while something about Max had weaved deep into her soul. And Amanda had done exactly the same thing, in a way no other child Paige had been charged with the responsibility of had managed.

Despite her best intentions, something about this pair had been too impossible to resist and she’d come to really care for them. To rely on them. To want them in her life.

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