Chapter 0044

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 you be dining alone?”

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

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 scare her out of it by

pounding on the wall –

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 –

God, she’s at her best when she’s angry, with that fire in her eyes, that courage she drags up from

somewhere deep in her soul – he loves to prod her, to push her, to raise that fire in her –

The way it felt, those few times when he lost his control, when he caught her spying on 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 –

The way it felt when she pounded her little fists against his chest – god, he had wanted to turn her

around right there, press her up against the wall, press the length of himself up against her ass as he

slipped his hand beneath her shirt, taught her a lesson about what it meant to defy him –

Kent squeezes a slice of the bread within his fist, crushing it, ruining it. Then he drops it to the table and

stares at it.

God damnit, that girl. She will be the undoing of him. She made him just lose it – lose absolute control

of himself, the one thing he never did. And she had absolutely no idea.

He had to get rid of her, Kent decided, looking 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 safe –

But the idea of it, of them building a life together, of her smiling at his son while she bore his children –

Kent grits his teeth and pounds his fist against the table once. God damnit.

He stares down at his plate as his mind races.

What could he do. 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 else –

Kent scoffs at himself, then, putting his hand over his face, disgusted. What was he thinking – trying to

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

him, and Alden –

God damnit, Kent had never been in such a tight spot. Had never wanted something so badly, and yet

had it so completely forbidden to him – in terms of morality, of honor, of political alliance, of family.

Absolutely forbidden.

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