Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 41 - Chapitre 50

LaylaHarvey’s laughter faded slowly.I stayed where I was, half across his chest, smiling into the warm skin beneath my cheek.It was strange how quickly the room had changed. Ten minutes earlier, I had been very aware that I was half-dressed in Harvey Whitmore’s lap. Now his arm was around me, one hand resting loosely against my back, and the silence felt almost domestic.That might have been more dangerous.I traced another slow line over his chest. After a few minutes, Harvey glanced down at me.“What are you thinking about?”“Nothing important. I’m just realizing how late it is.”His hand continued moving slowly against my back while my eyes drifted toward the clock.It was later than I’d realized.“I should probably go.”Harvey’s hand moved once along my back, but he didn’t immediately answer. That made me look at him.“What?”“Nothing.”“That wasn’t nothing.”“You said you should probably go.”“I did.”“And?”“And usually this is where someone agrees.”“Do you want me to?”I fr

HarveyKate came by my house the following evening after Sophie’s party.There was nothing unusual about that. She’d been coming to my home for years, sometimes with Rhys and Declan, sometimes alone. She knew she didn’t need an invitation.What was unusual was the way she stood in my kitchen talking about Sophie’s birthday as though she’d come over specifically to discuss the cake.“I still think four tiers was excessive,” she said, accepting the glass of wine I’d poured for her. “Sophie disagrees, obviously. She sent me a picture this morning of what was left and informed me she’d be eating it for breakfast.”“That sounds like Sophie.”“She’ll complain about feeling sick by noon.”“And somehow blame you.”“I ordered the cake. She’ll have a reasonable argument.”I looked at Kate. She took a sip of wine and glanced toward the windows.Something was wrong.I’d noticed it within minutes of her arriving, but I’d waited for her to get to whatever had brought her here. She wasn’t getting th

LaylaBy the time I reached Harvey’s house that evening, the hotel story had followed me long enough that I didn’t want to hear another word about it.Harvey had ordered dinner, but neither of us seemed particularly interested in eating. I was curled into one corner of the sofa with my shoes abandoned near the coffee table while he sat at the other end with his laptop open, reading through a document with the kind of concentration that usually meant he was pretending not to watch me.I’d told myself I was reading. I’d been on the same page for almost ten minutes.Harvey closed his laptop and looked over. “You’re still thinking about it.”“I’m trying not to.”“That isn’t working very well.”I sighed and dropped the book onto my lap. “Thank you. That was incredibly helpful.”He stood, walked around the coffee table, and without asking, lifted my legs onto his lap before sitting beside me again. His hand rested absently against my calf, his thumb brushing once through the fabric of my lo

Layla I had been nervous since leaving work. Harvey noticed before we were halfway to his parents’ house.“You’re doing it again.”I looked away from the window. “Doing what?”“Thinking yourself into a panic.”“I’m not panicking.” His gaze dropped to my hands. I’d been twisting one of my rings around my finger for the last five minutes. I stopped. “I’m concerned.”“That’s a generous description.”I gave him a look. “Your mother is about to find out that the woman who was supposed to marry one of her sons is now dating the other. I think I’m allowed to be concerned.”“My mother will have questions. The rest of my family will have opinions nobody asked for.”“This isn’t helping.”“I haven’t finished.” I looked at him, and Harvey reached across the space between us and took my hand. “None of that changes anything between us.”Some of the tension in my shoulders eased. “You’re strangely calm about this.”“I told you what to expect.”“That doesn’t explain why you look like we’re going to

LaylaKnowing I loved Harvey turned out to be inconvenient.It didn’t change anything between us. He was still Harvey. Still demanding, still arrogant, still perfectly capable of summoning me to his office with a two-word text as though asking politely would cause him physical pain.The problem was me.I kept looking at him.By the end of the week, he had caught me doing it enough times that I was beginning to suspect my secret wasn’t going to remain one for very long.Harvey had asked me to dinner that evening, and for once there was no work attached to it. No investment discussion. No family gathering waiting to become uncomfortable. No reason for us to pretend we were somewhere together by coincidence.An actual date.I’d gone back to Marissa’s after work to change, choosing an emerald-green silk dress I’d bought a few weeks earlier and hadn’t found an excuse to wear. It fell below my knees, fitted closely through my waist and hips, with thin straps and a softly draped neckline tha