Page 45 of Love Me Sweet

She stiffened.

“Let me say simply that I hope when I’m ready to leave, you’ll trust me enough, you’ll have enough respect for what we’ve shared, to tell me everything.” The smile that lifted his lips didn’t reach his eyes. “If that happens, I’ll consider this trip a success.”

* * *

“Tell me again about this event.” Andrew held open the car door for Sylvie, despite the fact that he knew she didn’t expect it.

She slipped into the car he’d rented, a new SUV with leather seats and a moon roof that she was going to request he open on their drive into Jackson.

“What do you want to know?” She waited to speak until he was behind the wheel and the garage door had silently lifted.

“The name, Jackson Hole Fall Arts Festival, tells me some of what to expect, but not all.”

“You want the entire scoop,” she said with an easy smile tossed in his direction, “not just a spoonful of information.”

“Exactly.” Andrew wasn’t sure why she appeared so relaxed, but he was grateful.

After their conversation this afternoon, a part of him had expected her to pull back. Instead, she seemed more relaxed than she’d been since he first arrived. It was as if some kind of weight had been lifted from her shoulders.

The story she’d relayed troubled him, made him want to hit something, and he wasn’t a violent guy. The thought of leaving a little girl alone…

“My sister’s daughter, Anne Elizabeth, is nine,” he heard himself say.

If Sylvie was surprised by the abrupt change in topic, it didn’t show. “I never met her.”

“Corinne and her family had been living in London. They’d only been back in the states for a couple of weeks before I left to come here.”

“She was doing something with your European division, right?”

Sylvie had obviously listened the times he’d discussed O’Shea Sports.

“Corinne runs the company’s European division.” Andrew pulled into a space nearly a mile from the downtown area. Though he didn’t know everything involved in this Arts Festival, he’d heard enough to know that the Palates and Palettes Gallery Walk going on this evening was very popular and he was unlikely to find a closer spot. “She’s a dynamo.”

“Is she back to visit?” Sylvie met him on the sidewalk as he rounded the front of the SUV.

“For now. She and her husband want to move back to the States.” Andrew took Sylvie’s arm as they started down the sidewalk toward the downtown district. It was automatic. While he’d never been into hand-holding before, in the time that he and Sylvie had been together it had become second nature. “She’d like to be the next COO of O’Shea Sports. She came to try to convince my father to change his mind.”

“Change his mind?”

“I’m assuming the position as of October 1.”

Sylvie stopped, just stopped in the center of the sidewalk, her face a study in confusion. “I knew your father was hoping to convince you to take that job, but you already have one. You’re a doctor.”

“My father is adamant that an O’Shea male succeeds him.” Andrew made no excuses for his father’s antiquated ideas. God knew, he’d tried his best to get his dad to change his mind on this matter.

“Do you want to do it?”

“It’s expected.”

“That isn’t what I asked.”

“I owe it to my father, to the family.” Andrew pressed his lips together. If not for him, Thomas would be at the helm and everyone would be happy.

As he’d expected the traffic on the sidewalk increased exponentially the closer they came to the downtown shopping area.

“I’d say I can’t believe we never talked about this.” Sylvie’s lips quirked up in a wry smile. “Except we didn’t do a lot of talking back in Boston.”

“It wasn’t all about sex,” he said, a bit indignant over the accusation.

---