Enchanted (The Accidental Billionaires #4)(44)

I pushed the doorbell, hoping like hell that Noah was home. I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to keep coming back.

There were several garages, so I definitely couldn’t identify his absence simply by noting there was no car in the driveway.

I startled at the sound of the door opening. It was Noah, and my eyes were immediately drawn to his face.

My heart melted just from seeing him again, even as I looked at his exhausted, wary face.

He looked tired and defeated, a look I’d never seen on him before, and I didn’t like it.

The thought that I might have put that kind of expression on his handsome face made my heart sink.

“Can we . . . talk?” I asked hesitantly.

“Why?” he asked brusquely. “I thought we’d already said everything there was to say.”

“I didn’t,” I said simply.

He swung the door open without a word and walked away.

I closed the door behind me and followed him.

Okay, maybe it wasn’t the warmest welcome, but at least he’d let me in.

I found him in the kitchen, making himself some coffee. “Can I have one of those?” I asked.

I was dragging ass. It was my first day back in Citrus Beach, and even though it was only a three-hour time difference from Boston, I hadn’t slept well.

He pulled his mug from the single-cup coffeemaker. “Help yourself,” he said gruffly as he leaned against the kitchen cupboard and took a sip of the steaming brew.

I opened the cupboard over the coffeemaker, and got lucky on the first try when I found a mug. I rifled around in the drawer with the coffee pods, found one that sounded strong, popped it into the appropriate slot, and shoved the mug underneath.

“I won’t take up much of your time. I’ll try to be quick,” I said nervously as I waited for the coffee.

“Why are you here, Andie?” he said curtly. “You already said you don’t do forever, and you were pretty clear about where you stood on the flight back.”

I made myself at home and found the cream and sugar to add to my coffee. I was pretty sure he wasn’t going to offer to get them himself.

I took a sip of the doctored coffee before I answered. “It’s not that I don’t do forever, Noah. It’s that I can’t do it.”

“I don’t follow you,” he said impatiently.

“Can we sit?” I didn’t want to explain while I was standing in the middle of his kitchen.

He jerked his head toward the right, and I trailed behind him, sipping on my coffee in the hope that it might give me some energy, until we got to what looked like a family room.

I sank into a nice, cushy leather recliner. It was comfortable, but it didn’t help me feel less uptight.

“So I guess you’re back from your trip to Boston with Owen,” he stated flatly.

“Yeah. I didn’t know you were keeping tabs on me.”

“I wasn’t. Owen is part of my family, remember? We all keep tabs on each other.”

I hated myself for feeling a little disappointed that he sounded more worried about his brother than he was about me. In some stupid, ridiculous way, I wanted him to be concerned about me, which made absolutely no sense in my rational mind.

“I guess I wouldn’t know that because I don’t really have any family. Nobody has ever really cared where I go and what I do,” I said honestly. “And yes, we’re obviously back.”

God, I hated the awkwardness between me and Noah. It had never been that way before that last hour or two on our flight back from Cancún.

I hated it.

The tension in the room was nearly unbearable.

I needed to get on with what I came for and get the hell away from Noah.

My heart was shattered, and I was going to need time to try to put it back together again.

Whatever Noah and I had shared, it was gone. There was no point in tormenting myself.

I couldn’t see a single sign of any emotion on Noah’s stony face, and I hated that, too. He’d openly expressed himself on the trip, smiled readily, and let me know when he was feeling any kind of emotion. He’d pretty much been an open book for me to read.

Now that novel about Noah had slammed shut right in front of my face.

I didn’t know the man sitting across from me, and that was painful.

“Let me just say what I have to say,” I said in a pleading voice.

He shrugged, but he didn’t say anything.

I decided to start at the beginning.

“When Owen and I left for Boston, I was excited to get to college. I wanted to study journalism and make my mark on the world with the written word. I had dreams of writing sensational exposés and uncovering mysteries and secrets like some of the best investigative journalists in the field right now.”

“Apparently, you got disillusioned after you got to Boston,” Noah said drily.

I shook my head. “I didn’t. I never lost my focus. My grades were stellar, and my future looked fantastic. I never gave up on college. It gave up on me. I barely made it through my second year before I couldn’t do it anymore.”

“Why?” he said sharply. “If your dreams were that vivid, you certainly could have stuck out a couple more years of college.”

I swallowed hard. Even though his words hurt, I guessed I understood how Noah could think that way.