Page 49 of Temptation at His Door

She’d amble downstairs, make some coffee and then come back up for a shower. Then she needed to go to the foundation offices to peruse some paperwork, and later this afternoon, she’d collect the boys from school. Maybe she could take them ice-skating on Frog Pond.

Joa walked down the stairs, trying to ignore the family photographs on the wall. It felt, yeah,weird, to be walking around half-naked in Ronan’s house. Shrugging off her unease, she hit the bottom of the stairs in the hallway and deliberately didn’t glance at the massive portrait of Thandi hanging on the wall to her right.

If she looked, she’d lose these wonderful morning-after tingles. She’d loved being with Ronan and loving him, and she wanted to hold on to those magical sparks still dancing across her skin.

Heading straight for the coffee maker in the kitchen, Joa popped a pod into the machine and shoved a mug under the spout. She hit the button and turned to open the fridge. And there, at eye level, was that damn note from Thandi to Ronan that Joa had read a million times.

Joa looked at the feminine handwriting, feeling her heart constricting. There were other notes under that one and, despite knowing she shouldn’t, Joa pulled them out from under the magnet keeping them attached to the fridge.

Welcome home, honey. You’ve been in my thoughts. (But mostly in my sexual fantasies.)

Ro, I’ll love you forever.

Kick ass at the auction, babe. We’ll celebrate your record-breaking sales with bed-breaking sex.

There were more, but Joa had read enough. Replacing the notes, she felt her stomach lurch. She slapped her hand to her mouth, dry heaving. She slid down the fridge and wrapped her arms around her stomach, tears running down her face.

She was such a fool. A colossal idiot.

She’d fallen in love with another unavailable man.

Resting her forehead on her knees, Joa cursed her tears, mortified and disappointed with herself. She’d returned home to Boston with a clear vision, a plan to get her life on track. She hadn’t planned on taking on more au pair work, determined to stop feeding her need to be part of a family by inserting herself into someone else’s life.

She remembered thinking that she had money and a place to live and that she could afford to take the time to write the pages in this next chapter of her life. She’d planned on taking some time to chart a path forward...

But what had she done? She’d repeated past mistakes by not only taking another au pair job but also falling in love with, and sleeping with, her boss.

And this time she wasn’t projecting, imagining, constructing a reality that wasn’t there. She was irrevocably, comprehensively, forever in love with Ronan. She also loved his gorgeous sons.

But it was the man who rocked her world, who spun her around, who flipped her inside out. She loved his body, enjoyed his wicked sense of humor, his sharp brain and his easygoing-until-he-wasn’t personality. She respected his devotion to his boys and his loyalty to his wife.

Hiswife...

Joa’s groan pierced the early-morning stillness of the house as reality, hard and hot and vicious, hit her. Ronan was still married in his heart, and probably always would be. Joa was the classic other woman, providing something Thandi couldn’t, but there was no doubt that Thandi held his heart. Ronan would never love Joa as he did Thandi.

The evidence to back up that statement was everywhere. Gorgeous Thandi, a dedicated mother, was said to have been his best friend. Ronan still called her his wife, not his late wife, and the massive portrait of her by the front door announced to anybody who stepped in this house that she was still mistress here.

Her presence was freakin’ everywhere. Fact: there wasn’t room for anyone else in Ronan’s life or his heart.

Ignoring the tears rolling down her face, Joa pushed herself to her feet and, carrying a heart as heavy as lead, made her way back up the stairs to the guest bedroom. She’d been so overwhelmed by Ronan last night she hadn’t thought about where they’d made love but now it didn’t escape her attention that they’d made love in the guest bedroom, she being theguest. She’d never even seen his bedroom, had no idea what was behind that perpetually closed door.

Joa walked into the en suite bathroom to flip on the taps to the shower. When the water was as hot as she could stand, she stepped into the glass cubicle, pushing away the images of Ronan’s head between her thighs, taking her up against the wet tiles while she writhed and screamed.

She’d never seen his bathroom or his bedroom because those were spaces he’d shared with Thandi, hallowed ground.

She got it, she did. She understood that he didn’t want those memories tainted, but it still hurt, dammit. It made her feel second best, less than. Joa would never be able to step into Thandi’s shoes...

She was a girl from the wrong side of the tracks. She’d never felt like she belonged anywhere and she certainly didn’t belong in this house, Thandi’s house. Even if Ronan offered the opportunity to try, Joa would never measure up.

Scrubbing the scent of Ronan off her skin, Joa pushed down her tears and forced herself to think.

She had to stop feeling sorry for herself and make a plan... She needed to look after herself because she was the only one who could.

She needed to extricate herself from this house, causing the minimum of disruption to both Ronan and the boys. And she already had the perfect excuse to do that—she’d found Ronan’s forever nanny. She just needed to set up the introduction. Abigail was kind, generous and suitable, and her presence in the house meant that Joa could move on.

While she was being honest with herself, she should accept that running the foundation as the CEO was just another pipe dream. Like Ronan, it was something she wanted but couldn’t have. She wasn’t qualified. Maybe she’d go back to au pairing, maybe not, but she knew that she had to leave Boston. She couldn’t stay in this city; it would be too hard.

Luckily, she had time and she had money. She could figure out what she wanted from life as easily in Morocco or Monte Carlo as she could here.

---