Chapter 26 – Self–Control-1

Kent storms into the dining room, where the table is set for four. He sits down hard in his chair at the head of the table, waving at the place settings on either side of him.

“Remove these,” he says to the waitstaff, biting off the words in his frustration. “Have Daniel’s and Fay’s plates sent up to Fay’s room, they’ll take their supper there.”

The waitstaff give each other worried looks but silently do as they’re told. The chef comes out next, looking around the room.

“Sir?” He asks, his French accent heavy in the word. “Will y be dining alone?”

“Apparently,” Kent says, angry that Fiona isn’t here either. “Please bring it out.”

you

The chef nods, impassive, and heads back into the kitchen. A few moments later he appears again with Kent’s first course – salmon tartare with a small side salad and a freshly–sliced French baguette.

Kent ignores the fish and reaches directly for the bread, slathering it with butter as he sits back in his chair and thinks.

Thinks, inevitably, about her.

God damnit, he almost couldn’t take looking at her tonight, sitting there in her bed, crying as if her heart would break. He had tried – tried to break the mood, to cajole her out of it. to

But she had just kept crying –

He grits his teeth between bites of bread, angry with himself for not being able to control himself. For wanting, even now, to dash up those stairs and so something — anything – to make her stop.

But she was Daniel’s problem now, a right with Daniel had just asserted upstairs. Kicking him out and keeping Fay all to himself.

Kent has tried, these past few weeks. Tried to distract himself, to busy himself with his work and his plans, tried to ignore her when she walks by, the light lily scent of her shampoo drifting through the air-

The wide–eyed expressions of her face, when she’s shocked, happy, sad, angry –

from somewhere

him in the basement, for instance, and chased her up the stairs, pinned her against the hall of her room, saw the passion in her, then – the defiance

right there, press her up against the wall, press the length of himself up against

the bread

Chapter 26

Self–C

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be the undoing of him. She made him just lose it – lose

blankly across the room. He’d send them away – marry them quick, send them back to the old country to his family there, where they’d be

of them building a life together, of her smiling at his son while she bore his

teeth and pounds his fist against

down at his plate as

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Gifts

26 – Self–Control–2

What, really, was the other option. Could he, somehow, claim her for his own – convince Daniel to give her up, to move on to someone

thinking – trying to find a way to take his son’s fiancé from him? It was unthinkable, despicable. Daniel would never forgive him,

had it so completely forbidden to him – in terms of morality,

himself slipping, bit by bit. If he loses control of himself, he knows that he

sometimes, when she looks at him that way. When she half–lids her eyes and pulls her lower lip into her mouth.

slams his fist against the table again, forcing his mind away from the

the fuck was he going to do.

“Hey baby,” she says with a big

at him, then, and her smile falters. She can see, clearly, that he’s in a foul mood and she has to tread very, very carefully if

for you?” Kent says, narrowing his eyes at her. “Why should I wait for you,

was five minutes late. Still, she tries to keep it

on such formal terms in this house,” she says casually, trying a small

She screws her mouth shut, looking down at her plate and taking a piece of bread out of its little basket, fiddling

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