Enchanted (The Accidental Billionaires #4)(37)

He shook me gently. “I want to do more than just plan a damn trip. When we get home, I want to do some real dates. I want to spoil you rotten because you’re my woman. Eventually, I want to propose marriage to you, and have you say yes. I know I’m going to have to earn that right. But I don’t give a shit. Someday, you are going to be my wife, Andie, because fuck knows that I don’t even want to imagine not having you with me for the rest of my life.”

I cringed, and moved back a little like I’d just seen a poisonous snake. My eyes suddenly filled with tears, and I tried to blink them away. “I don’t roll like that, Noah. I’m mindful. I like to live life from moment to moment, day to day. I don’t think of the distant future.”

Oh, dear God. I hadn’t meant to lead him to believe all of this could last forever. Not that I didn’t yearn for what he was talking about, but it wasn’t the life . . . for me.

“Fuck! Then we can slow it down. You’re still young. Maybe you’re not ready for marriage. We can date, but I can’t deal with you dating anybody else. I’ll talk you into taking me on forever someday.” The determined look on his handsome face caused a tear to plop onto my cheek, unchecked.

Then another . . .

And yet another . . .

“You can’t change who I am, Noah,” I said tearfully.

“I don’t want to change you,” he rasped. “I just want to know that somewhere in the future, I have a damn chance.”

I didn’t even try to stop the tears from falling. I hadn’t cried in years, and now the droplets were leaking out of my eyes like an endless stream.

The pain in my chest was so acute that I felt like my heart was going to explode.

I hurt.

I hurt so damn much.

I would have given anything to have the power to throw myself into his arms and tell him the truth: that there would never be another man in my life like him.

Sometime during the last few weeks, Noah had started to become my everything.

My joy.

My pain.

My pleasure.

My heart.

But I couldn’t lie to him. “I can’t promise you forever, Noah. It’s not me.”

He threw his arms out. “So what in the hell was all of this? Some kind of game?”

I shook my head vehemently. “No. Never. When Owen asked me to go with you to Cancún, I really wanted to see you again. Whether you know it or not, you helped when I was a kid. I idolized you. You always seemed to have all of the answers when I didn’t. I wasn’t a confident child, but you didn’t make me feel like I was different because of that. You made me feel some sense of normal. You, and all of your family whenever I was with you.”

“So Owen had to talk you into this whole thing,” he said harshly. “You weren’t going just because you wanted to do some travel writing.”

“He broached the opportunity,” I said truthfully. “I took him up on it. He didn’t have to talk me into it. I’m not going to bullshit you, Noah. Your family is worried about you. I promised Owen I’d do my best to make you relax. Everything else that happened was all about us.”

“According to you, there is no us,” he said angrily.

I swiped a hand across my face to wipe away the tears, but they just kept falling. “I didn’t say that. I want to be with you.”

He glared at me, and it made me flinch. I wasn’t used to seeing the colder side of Noah Sinclair.

“Why? What’s the point, Andie, if it’s just going to end up with you taking off somewhere and leaving me at the end? Do you really think I’m a damn masochist?” He was really furious. I could tell by his stony expression and the ticking in his stiff jawline.

What’s the point?

God, maybe he was right. What was the point?

I’d been on the verge of pouring my guts out to him to make him understand why I lived my life this way, but his outburst had stopped me in my tracks.

“There is no point,” I conceded as I got up and gathered my clothing from the floor. “I’m sorry.”

The pain of walking away from him was excruciating, but I knew it was the right thing to do.

Someone like me wasn’t good for him.

He deserved forever.

He deserved total commitment.

He deserved a woman who could give him that, and that female wasn’t me.

I went into the bathroom, and then closed and locked the door behind me.

I waited until I got into the shower before I lost all control. I sat on a small stool as the warm water washed over me, and sobbed out the pain and loss that was pummeling me relentlessly.

By the time I was dressed and I’d pulled myself together, we were getting ready to land.





CHAPTER 15

NOAH



“What in the hell is wrong with you, Noah?” my brother Seth questioned a week later as he and Aiden sat at my kitchen table, both of them downing a beer with me. “You came back from Cancún looking better, and a week later, you look like hell again.”

At the moment, I would have preferred a big bottle of tequila to the beer I was guzzling, but I made do with the brew from the case that Aiden had brought with him.

“That was vacation,” I said stoically. “This is real life.”

Honestly, I had finished my dating app, and it was in the testing phase. But I hadn’t immediately started another project. I’d tried, but I wasn’t concentrating well enough to do the start-up work.