Page 25 of The Secrets He Keeps

Something flashed in her gaze, something that caused a clench of concern.

Pulling free of his arms, she turned toward the carriage door. “I’ll be rather busy for a while.”

The groom assisted her from the vehicle but Erik couldn’t leave it at that. Before she could walk away from him yet again, he leaned forward to remind her, “There are six days remaining in our agreement.”

Wrapping her cloak securely around herself, she looked at him over her shoulder and offered a sly, knowing smile. “That is true, but I am a busy woman, Mr. Maxwell. Something of which you are well aware. I will not change my life to suit your purposes.”

He frowned. “And I would never ask you to.” Her devotion to her business was one of the things he admired most about her. And the truth was, if he could not convince her to give him a chance within the boundaries she had set, then he did not deserve her time.

She arched her brows. “Wouldn’t you?”

The distrust in her voice struck him harder and deeper than ever before. He’d thought she was starting to understand him as he was coming to better understand her. He’d hoped she might be starting to feel some real affection for him.

But as she turned away and walked to the front door of her private residence, he realized he might be further from his goal than he’d thought.

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