Page 50 of The Rancher's Secret Relationship

There was another knock on the door, and Catherine frowned. What an unusually impatient bellboy!

She opened the door, intending to give the young man a piece of her mind, but instead of a uniformed teenager, she saw an exceptionally handsome man in plaids and jeans.

Slade tensed as the older woman stepped out of the room without a word and pulled the door shut.

Catherine subjected the man to a more thorough inspection, taking note of the stiff outline of his figure and the desperation in his gaze.

Kady's mother lifted her chin. "Mr. Wyndham, I take it?"

"Mrs. Abrams." He bowed his head in a gesture of respect, but Catherine was only the slightest bit mollified. He had good manners, but it didn't erase the fact that he had made her baby girl cry.

"I'd like to speak if Kady—-"

"So you could hurt her again?"

Slade's jaw hardened. "I don't know how much she's told you—-"

"Nothing much at first," she said coldly. "You had her crying so hard she could barely string two words together when she came here." She saw his face whiten, but it still wasn't enough.

Images of Kady crying flayed him, and the billionaire could feel himself drowning in self-contempt and desperation.God.He had never meant to hurt her that way. And he would never ever hurt her again...if she only gave him one last chance.

"I was an idiot," he said hoarsely. "I hurt her when she only deserved to be cherished. But it's different now—-"

"My daughter has been with you for weeks," she flared at him angrily, "and you told her it wasn't enough for her to fall in love with you. Now you're telling me that you've had a change of heart in a matter of hours?" Catherine's lip curled as she watched the truth hit him like a punch to the guts, and a sickened expression fell on his face.

"I was wrong." Slade's voice was taut. "And she was right."

"And that's it?"

"And now," he said forcefully, "I'm here to beg for her forgiveness."

"Because you love her?"

"Yes." The admission was swift and hard, the gaze that met Catherine's unflinching. "I love her. I probably even loved her before she fell in love with me. And even if..." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "Even if she doesn't take me back, I doubt it would make me stop loving her. I've always been an all-or-nothing kind of guy, andKady..." He breathed deeply, the mere sound of her name driving a terrifying point home, now that he had accepted she was everything to him.

Maybe, maybe one day Kady might be able to find someone else to love. It could happen. Because she had loved Slade with all she had, and that kind of love was what made people tough and enabled her to move on.

But it wouldn't be the same for him.

Because he had been the one to fuck up.

And people who fucked up...

The way he had fucked up with her...

If she never came back, then he was lost. Fucking lost without her, and he would never find his way back.

KADY HEARD THE DOORopen. "Mom?"

"Who else?" Catherine's voice was its usual tart tone, but there was something a little off, like a faint tremor in the end, and Kady bit her lip, remembering how she had caught her mother crying in the bathroom, thinking that Kady wouldn't see her.

"The room service we ordered still isn't here, so I'm going to speak with reception."

The words startled her into turning on the couch, and she was confused to see her mother hurriedly zipping her purse shut. "You could just call reception—-"

"But I don't want to." Catherine's tone was weirdly petulant, and even weirder was how her mother couldn't quite meet her eyes. "So will you please just stop asking me these things?"

Alarm bells started ringing inside her head when she saw Catherine practically run towards the door. She jumped to her feet. "Mother—-" But this only made her mother pick up her speed, and her suspicions grew. Laramie might not be the nation's most dangerous city, but what if someone had managed to sneak inside the hotel and threaten her mother at gunpoint?

---