Page 94 of Sweet Wicked Vows

Eight months.

Our time together was a ticking time bomb waiting to explode on us the second I pressed the detonate button.

Maybe in another lifetime, another universe, I could do the things I needed to do and keep her, too.

But in this lifetime, she’d never forgive me.

And hurting her was going to be the death of me.

Chapter TwentyNine

The rest of the Christmas holiday went without incident.

Penny woke the entire house at the crack of dawn on Christmas morning, screaming with excitement when Frederic revealed the bundle of presents Santa left under the tree. Her excitement and sheer innocent joy was palpable.

Everyone was in high spirits.

Even Frederic cracked a couple of smiles. Though they were solely reserved for his daughter, it was still nice to see him in a different light.

Who would have thought the ice-man himself was capable of showing any warmth?

The entire Dade family went out of their way to make the day as special as possible for Penny. Presents, never-ending helpings of food and drink, games, and plenty of stories about her grandsons that Florence was bursting at the seams to share with me.

When she pulled out the photo albums, pointing out the little dark-haired boy with stormy whiskey eyes who smiled less and less as the years went by, my heart broke.

It was too easy to pinpoint when they all lost their mother.

Getting the chance to see the side of Jaxon that doted on his niece, the side that against his best efforts laughed at his younger brother’s awful jokes, and the side that went out of his way toinvolve me at all times—it was easy to imagine spending every Christmas with him and his family.

Jaxon by the end of our trip was a completely different man to the one who touched down in Monaco.

He scowled a hell of a lot less for a start, which, for Jaxon, was revolutionary.

It was two months after the Christmas holidays and honestly things between us were as close to perfect as they could be.

I couldn’t say the same about my own family. Flynn remained in hisI’m not speaking to youphase, and my father showed no signs of improvement.

It was my saving grace that Jaxon and I were finally starting to work harmoniously together. When we arrived back in New York, he moved his work things into my office atReynolds Regality Jewelsour first day back to work.

A silent blessing. There was no coincidence that the day we started sharing one office was the same day Kerry Zhang stopped sauntering into my office and reminding me how shit everything was now that I was in charge.

Thank the heavens.

We spent our workdays playing damage control to the PR messes. Jaxon mainly dealt with the CFO and COO to try and stop share prices from plummeting further, while I did my best to ease clients’ and investors’ minds. Half the time, I didn’t know what the hell I was doing. If it weren’t for Jaxon, the company would have died months ago.

I didn’t want to jinx it, but we were a pretty damn good team.

And it wasn’t just the office. At home, it was even better.

We ate dinner together every night, no matter how late it was, but most of the time in bed after hours of mind-bending orgasms.

After a week back home, I moved my things into his bedroom. If he needed to leave for his own business, he kept me up to datewith regular messages throughout the days he was gone.

It was as if we were a real married couple.

In his absences, I missed him more than I dared to admit to his face. The whole house felt empty without him, with both me and Bell counting down the seconds until he was home again.

Though my mind tried to slow down my deepening feelings, it was impossible to miss the difference in how he looked at me. He went out of his way to touch me whenever he got a chance, placing gentle kisses on the top of my head and on my lips in public, and completely ravaging every part of me when we were alone at night.

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