HAPPY FOREVER AFTER

Of course he’d discovered one other way of finding the relaxed, happy, free Emma. And he knew he would prefer it…. A languorous morning of lovemaking. But he also knew she wouldn’t want that. Hell, she wouldn’t even look at him, not to talk of letting him touch her. Her reaction to his attempted kiss was enough proof she didn’t want that.

So he swallowed the very tempting suggestion and kept his thoughts to himself.

He watched her stretch to put a glass cup on the top shelf. It obviously wasn’t balanced, because as soon as she left it, it came back down and crashed on the floor in front of her.© 2024 Nôv/el/Dram/a.Org.

Daniel moved fast, scared of her hurting herself.

Emma felt her body hit solid, warm muscle. The feel of his body was amazing. She hated that he could still make her feel this way. She let him pull her away from the broken glass and turn her around.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

He held her close. Her hand was on his chest. She should have snatched it back, of course. Should definitely not have stretched her fingers and pressed her palm a little tighter against him, remembering the nights she had spent held against that chest, the salty taste as she’d kissed it, how she’d pressed her palms to it as she’d… She had to stop. She thought.

Daniel’s arm tightened around her and she wondered if he was remembering, too. She looked up and found his gaze intent on her, his eyes serious. Her lips parted, and her body begged her to stretch up, to press her lips against his, to lose herself in his body.

But her brain screamed warnings thick and fast. Caught in the middle, she wavered, leaning back slightly against Daniel’s arm as she met his gaze. She took a deliberate step backwards. Her life was chaotic enough.

Daniel gave her a long look, his expression neither regretful nor pleased, but hovering somewhere around wary.

“Are you alright?” he asked again.

“I’m fine” she snapped at him, and pulled herself away from him, a little too forcefully.

Daniel frowned. “I’m just looking out for you, Emma. You could have seriously hurt yourself. You shouldn’t act that way towards me… You should be grateful.”

“Don’t tell me how to act,” she replied. “I didn’t get hurt, did I? Thank you for caring”

He looked really angry. He opened his mouth like he was about to say something, but then he closed it again. He moved away from her and returned with a broom and began to clear up the broken glass.

————————-

The more Emma dwelled on her situation with Daniel, the more she knew she couldn’t continue to stay with him. She might have to raise a baby with a man who didn’t love her, but she couldn’t live with him, see him every day and stand by his side, suffering an eternity of silent anguish.

She almost took the coward’s way out and left for her mom’s without talking to him, but she knew it would only undermine his faith in her even more. And obviously he thought so little of her. Despite how angry she was at him, a part of her still cared about what he thought of her. She hated that.

So days later, she made her arrangements, packed, then had Karen drop her outside Kay Corp.

She was shown directly into his empty office. She looked around, it had been a while she had been here. She thought. He joined her immediately, before she’d had a chance to take in a deep breath and compose herself.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, clearly having been pulled from a meeting. He closed the door with a firm clip. “Are you alright? I thought your next appointment with the doctor was a week from tomorrow.” He reached inside his jacket for his phone while raking a sharp gaze from her face to her feet.

“That’s not-” She linked her hands before her and tried to look calm and resolved when she was actually terrified and already beginning to miss him.

“That’s not why I’m here. I’m going back to stay with my mom for a while, Daniel.” she said finally.

His brows slammed together. “When?”

“Karen’s car is downstairs. I’m on my way already.”

“And you tell me this now?” He glanced toward the door he’d come through, looking as though his mind was trying to wrap up whatever he’d been discussing.

“I’m not asking you to come with me. In fact-” He swung his attention back to her, his forbidding glare like a roundhouse kick to the face.

She licked her lips. She continued, clinging to her composure. “I’m not running away, Daniel. I’m not. It’s a return ticket. I plan to come back… when I’m ready of course. Unless you would prefer I stayed there.” she said.

“Of course it’s not what I would prefer.” His voice roughened and tightened with intensity. “If you had given me more than five minutes’ notice, I would have arranged and taken you myself. Give me an hour and I will.”

“I don’t want you to.” Emma said firmly.

His head flung back as though she’d raked her nails down his cheek. “You don’t?” he asked.

“I want you to stay here and believe me when I say I’m coming back.” Her chest constricted as she threw down that gauntlet. Her grip was going to leave fingerprint bruises on the backs of her hands with the way she was holding on so tight. She thought.

“I want to prove to you that I can be trusted. It’s the only way I can see us moving forward in-” her voice thinned and she fought to make it strong enough to be heard “-in any capacity.”

He was not a slow man. His incisive brain was getting there before she had to spell it out. “And what sort of capacity do you envision?” His expression was already altering with comprehension, hard and implacable, but she couldn’t tell what he was thinking beneath that wall. Couldn’t decipher what he was feeling. Not beyond umbrage and refusal to accept what she was saying before she’d even spoken the words.