Page 103 of The Candlemaker

“Where?”

I lifted my chin. “Your hotel.”

He stiffened but agreed, waiting as I collected my things and then locked the door behind us. The next twenty minutes passed in a blink. Walking to his car. Picking up dinner from my favorite Mexican place. Driving out of town to the small hotel he’d stayed at the last time. Next I knew, I stepped into the small suite that overlooked the ocean; it had to be the nicest room in the hotel.Of course.

“You should eat,” he murmured, setting the takeout bag on the small table near the windows. “Just a little,” he pleaded, catching my wary gaze. “I’m going to shower so I don’t smell.”

It was faint—the offending scent and the way it clung to his clothes and skin—but all it would take was one too-deep breath from a little too close.

“Thank you,” I blurted out for what felt like the hundredth time today and then tried to lighten it with, “I wouldn’t want to puke everywhere and have you lose your security deposit on the room.”

Chandler reached out and trailed his finger along my cheek, a half-grin toying with the corner of his perfect mouth. “Puke wherever you want, baby. I’ll buy the whole damn hotel if I have to,” he declared, leaving me wide-eyed and gaping as he disappeared into the bathroom.

I didn’t stand a chance against him. Not then. Not now.

I took a seat in one of the chairs and opened the bag, taking a hesitant inhale of the warm tacos and then a deeper one when it didn’t immediately send my stomach into somersaults. And my memory flashed back to the last time I’d had tacos; it was the night of the storm.

While I ate, my eyes scanned the room. The colors werelight—coastal, but the decor was modern. Not the typical vomit of seashells and lighthouse paraphernalia that places around here usually had. The space felt cool and comfortable. Relaxing with the stretch of ocean right outside the large windows. It could use a candle, though. A good scent to tie everything together.

“You okay?”

My head turned, and my jaw went slack. I was okay…until he came out of the bathroom wearing those sweatpants.

“Yeah.” I snapped my mouth shut. “Just taking in the view.” Of course, I was looking at him when I said it. I meant to turn toward the window, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t tear my eyes from the broad handle of his shoulders, remembering how it felt to hold them, or the hard expanse of his chest, or the way the steel of his muscles rippled under the hot wax.

Wanting him was the worst pregnancy craving I’d experienced yet.

My tongue swiped out, wetting my bottom lip as my gaze sank to the taper of his waist and then lower, where the gray sweatpants hugged…enough.

“What happened, Chandler?” I pulled my legs up onto the chair, holding my knees to my chest.

This time, the question looked like it wounded him.

He walked to the window and bundled his arms over his chest. Here, like this, he didn’t look like an all-powerful billionaire who’d just promised to buy an entire hotel if my not-confined-to-morning sickness made me destroy a hotel room. He looked like a broken soldier. One who’d given everything to his final battle and still lost.

“My mom fell.”

Only three words, and my gasp through the room was audible.Was she okay? Was she…my throat was too tight to letany question through it, my tongue too weighted from all the heartbreaking possibilities.

“My phone started going off at five thirty that morning; she’d fallen on her way to the bathroom. It was bad.I didn’t even think, Frankie. I just left.” His jaw pulsed, the muscles working up the courage to continue. “I got there, and they’d already flown her to the hospital. There was so much blood…she’d shattered her whole leg.”

“Oh my god.”

“I went to the hospital. She was in surgery after surgery after surgery. I didn’t sleep. Eat. I didn’t…”

“Exist,” I said softly, the small word breaking his trance. His head turned slowly, his ragged gaze finding mine as he fought to swallow.

“Yeah,” he croaked.

I felt the pain in his soul like it reached right out of him and wrapped its hand around my throat, so I offered him a piece of mine in return. It had been a long time since I’d felt that kind of pain. A long time since that wound had healed. But I’d never forget the memory or the pain.

“When Kit was injured at the marathon, we got the call and nothing else mattered. He had a lot of burns. Needed so many surgeries. We thought he was safe because he was home, and he almost died,” I murmured. “The weeks he was in the hospital, it was like everything stopped. Like nothing could go on until we knew if he…”

“Would make it,” he finished for me this time, his mouth pulling into a tight line before letting loose a heavy exhale.“The next time I could think about…anything, it was almost three weeks later. And then I remembered how I left…how you had no idea…” He paused and cleared his throat again. “I remembered about Lou’s offer… about how I’d agreed to it the night before and pushed it through…and then I realized how much worse it must’ve looked…felt…when I disappeared.”

My insides felt like a tornado trapped in a washer. A storm on the spin cycle. Everything I thought—my entire perception of that morning, of what transpired, of why he left—was all wrong.

“You agreed before you left?”

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