Page 21 of Finding Forever

Cade tugged at his collar,sharing her discomfort with the subject matter. He felt like a dumb teenager. He’d used a condom for God’s sake, this was not a conversation they should even be having.

Yet here they were.

“You weren’t a student,” he said choosing not to address—or think of—anything else just yet. “Why were they still watching you like a hawk?”

He was immediately annoyed with himself for asking. He didn’t want to know more about her than absolutely necessary.

Fern moved toward the kitchen counter and climbed onto one of the high barstools, coming dangerously close to giving him a panty flash. He quickly averted his eyes and when helooked back at her after a moment, she’d placed her elbows on the marble countertop and propped her chin in her hands.

“Because my stepfather paid them to,” she informed with a shrug. “They were nothing more than glorified babysitters, and I was their unwilling hostage.”

His jaw tightened but he chose not probe any further.

Fern knewshe must seem like an absolute doormat to him. It embarrassed her, how completely under Granger’s control she’d been.

She lowered a hand to trace a pale green vein on the white marble countertop, ashamed now by how very little power she’d had in her life. And she now—for the first time since making this arrangement—wondered how much more of it she’d ceded to Cade.

“I borrowed the money,” she admitted, her voice soft and self-conscious. “From a student. For the train fare to the clinic. I didn’t want to go to the clinic in town, everybody would know. I had to find a way to get to Bern and have it done there.”

His eyebrows lowered into a formidable frown.

“Why borrow money? You were working for the school, right?”

She laughed, the sound devoid of any humor. “They let me to stay because it was convenient to my stepfather. He paid them to keep me there. My job? Purely made up. I was allowed to stand in the classroom, hand out assignments, write notes on the whiteboard. I worked for room and board and earned a small weekly salary for personal items. Honestly? I don’t think the arrangement was even legal. Thesalarywas barely enough for even a return train ticket from Rapperswil to Bern.”

She covered her face with her hands and heaved a sighinto her palms.

“I must seem like such a loser to you.”

“On the contrary,” he said. “I’m beginning to comprehend just how much courage it must have taken for you to come to me the other night.”

The words were delivered in such a carefully neutral, unemotional tone that it took Fern a second to recognize that he’d paid her a compliment.

“Yeah, it takes a lot of guts to sneak out of your room and slide a letter under somebody’s door,” she said dismissively and his eyes narrowed.

“Don’t do that.” This time there was censure in his voice and in the thinning of his lips. “Don’t trivialize what you did. It was a huge step, and it altered the course of your life.”

“Cade, I swapped masters. That’s all.”

His eyes snapped dangerously, and he jerked upright at her words. She’d offended him. She could tell. She wasn’t even sure why she’d said it. Except that she really felt like she’d exchanged one man dictating her life for another.

“How the fuck can you say that?” he asked, his voice tight, his back and shoulders rigid with tension. “I have no interest in controlling your every move, Fern. You’re so used to beingmanagedthat you’ve failed to recognize that you’re now the mistress of your own fate. I have your mother’s company and that’s all I’ll ever want from you.Youwill soon have a hundred and fifty million pounds in your bank account, to do with whatever the fuck you want. You also own several properties in about eight different countries on three separate continents, including this one.”

She blinked at him, the reality of her situation finally starting to sink in, and she felt the beginnings of a soft, hesitant smile tug at her lips.

“You’re free, Fern… if you chose to, you could walk out of that door in just a few short weeks, and all of that will be out there waiting for you.Butif we continue with this charade for awhile longer, if you leave no fucking doubt in anyone’s mind that this marriage is real—nobody willevertake what’s yours again.”

“Why would you do this for me?” she asked on a broken, uncertain whisper and he signed impatiently.

“Come on, Fern. You know that I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it forme, for HC&E, because if there’s no doubt about our marriage, there’s also no doubt about my claim to Lambecrete, and that’s all I’m really after.”

“Right.”

Cade was havinga hard time looking at Fern in that too-short T-shirt. At the same time, he was also having a very hard time lookingawayfrom her… because the garment wasn’t as modest as she likely believed it to be.

The fabric was thin from continual use, almost threadbare in spots. It left little to the imagination the way it lovingly cupped the shape of her small, braless breasts, outlining her hard little nipples in sharp relief every time she inhaled and it was distracting as all hell.

His eyes drifted from her long, remarkable hair, which was loosely twisted into a thick braid and fell down her back to just above her pert round arse. Then his gaze helplessly trailed over the naked, silken expanse of her slender shapely legs and soft thighs. He took in all of these details with covert, stolen glances. Helplessly entranced by everything about her. Even her fucking perfect pink toes, with their neat little nails sweetly adorned with clear, shiny polish, were diverting and Cade hated that he’d noticed them. That he’d noticed any of it.

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