Page 45 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

It would hurt like hell at first, but once she managed to put some distance between herself and this place, from Max and Amanda, and even bloody Reg, Paige would start to feel more like herself. She just needed, desperately, to get away.

CHAPTER TWELVE

MAX STARED AT his computer screen with the sensation the bottom had just fallen out of his world.

Dear Mr Stone,

I regret to inform you that for personal reasons Ms Cooper will no longer be able to continue with her contract. While such occurrences are rare, from time to time we do find our staff members’ situations change for reasons beyond our control. Please accept my most sincere apologies for this. Ms Cooper has advised that her last day will be in one week.

I have attached the profiles of three different nannies who would be available immediately to replace Ms Cooper.

Please advise which staff member you would like to engage when you’ve had a chance to review their CVs, and if I can help with anything in the meantime, please do not hesitate to be in touch.

Best wishes

Nicholas Tankard, CEO

‘What the actual hell?’ he snapped into the air of his study, flicking his laptop down and scraping back his chair, staring at the door for about three seconds before prowling over to it and pulling it open as if the thing had done him some great personal wrong.

What the actual hell?

The house was silent except for the sound of his rough breathing.

He stormed from room to room, throwing open the doors, his mood worsening with each room he looked into and found empty.

At the back door of the house, he stared out, frowning mutinously at the darkening sky, the heat of the day sticky and oppressive, but he barely noticed any of those things. He was focused on Paige with a singular intensity.

He took the old timber stairs—rarely used—onto the lawn at the rear of the house, stalking past an enormous, ancient frangipani tree, a threadbare blanket of the tree’s first flowers starting to brown at the edges. Max trampled them without noticing.

On the edges of the lawn was the rainforest, and a throwaway comment Paige had made a few days before Singapore reverberated through his mind. ‘I’d love to explore it. I’ll have to, before I go.’ At the time, he’d dismissed it, because of course there’d be time for that. He hadn’t realised that she’d already been planning an early departure.

He ground his teeth, step quickening, sky darkening behind him. By the time he reached the edge of the rainforest, the first of the big, fat raindrops had begun to fall and the petrichor was instantly familiar to Max, who’d grown up with these sorts of tropical storms.

‘Paige?’ he shouted, anger tangling with worry now as he mentally catalogued the number of things that could go wrong in the rainforest for someone lacking experience. From snakes to spiders to leeches to slippery rocks, lantana, dangerous edges, fallen branches. ‘Paige?’ His voice ripped through the moss-covered tree trunks as he went deeper and deeper, his gut churning for a thousand reasons, none of them good.

She woke as if from a long, long sleep, eyes heavy, head fuzzy, and the first thing she noticed was that the light was so magical—almost green—and then, she heard it again. Her name, loud yet muffled. Standing, she moved to the edge of the attic where a small window showed a bird’s eye view of this tropical paradise. Her heart twisted because she wouldn’t be here for much longer to appreciate this stunning vista. She would always remember this place though; it was here that she’d realised something about herself she’d thought impossible. She wasn’t so utterly destroyed that she couldn’t love.

It scared her but, on another level, it also gave her hope.

Maybe, maybe this meant her future would be different from the grim one she’d always anticipated.

Except...how?

She’d felt love here, but it was love for Max and Amanda, for this place. Despite what Max had said, Paige didn’t believe lightning would strike twice.

This alone was it.

When she left, her heart would remain behind.

Always.

‘Paige?’

There was something in his voice, something awfully, blood-curdlingly panicked, so she was running before she realised it, out of the attic door and down the old narrow stairs, to the next level of this magical house, then down the next stairs, and the next, then out of the front door, onto the lawn, where she paused, panting, hands on hips as she waited, listening—where was he? Rain fell, heavy, and out to sea a blade of lightning sliced through the thick, leaden sky. A moment later, thunder rolled, so loud it vibrated in the pit of Paige’s stomach.

And then, another sound—his voice, and from out here she could distinguish its direction: the rainforest.

She ran to the edges. Worry slicked her palms with sweat; at the barrier of the rainforest, it was much darker and cooler. The canopy was so thick it effectively blotted out almost all of the light, and the trunks were covered in lichen and moss and strange, green vines that almost looked to be strangling some of the thicker trees—she’d seen these in the photograph in Max’s office.

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