Hollywood Heir (Westerly Billionaire #4)(42)

“I know I’ve been acting kind of weird, but I’ll explain everything to you soon. Not tonight, though. Not on the phone. Are you free tomorrow?”

“No,” she said with a touch of defiance in her tone.

“Are you upset with me?”

“Yes. Listen, I know you’re dealing with something, but I’m getting really tired of being left standing there wondering what I said or did to make you sprint away. I don’t need another person in my life who makes me feel like nothing I do is right.”

“You’re not the problem, Sage. You never have been.”

“Still, I’m busy tomorrow.”

“Because you actually are or because you don’t want to see me?”

“I don’t want you to think that you can do and say whatever you want and I’ll just accept it. I waited all day for you to call, and it wasn’t fun. I don’t like the way it made me feel, and I need time to think about if I’m willing to risk feeling that way again.”

“I’m sorry, Sage. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Leaving when things get difficult is not my finest quality. I won’t do it again. I promise. I wouldn’t blame you if you said you never wanted to see me again, but that’s not what I want.”

“It’s not what I want, either,” she said. “Do you remember how you said you wanted to be there if I met up with the man I gave my card to in the park? He called. I’m taking him flower shopping day after tomorrow. You could join us if you’d like.”

“Day after tomorrow? Shit, I wish I could. I have something planned for that day that I can’t get out of. It’s really important or I would cancel it.”

“What are you doing?”

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. “Something with my family that involves travel.”

“Where to?”

“How about if I promise to sit down with you and tell you all about it when I come back?”

“Let me get this straight. You’re going somewhere—you can’t tell me where. To do something—you won’t tell me what. And you want me to be okay with that because you’ll explain it all to me later?”

“Yes?”

“No,” she said, and hung up.

Fuck.



Wayne called her back, but she silenced her phone. Bella had told her to demand that people treat her better, and Sage was beginning to do just that.

Wayne, if that really was his name, could either tell her whatever it was he was hiding from her or he could find another woman to frustrate. Just because he had eyes she could get lost in and a body designed to tempt any woman didn’t mean he could do as he pleased.

The next morning Sage woke up to a bouquet of wildflowers being delivered to her door with a card that simply said, “Call me.”

“No,” Sage said to the deliveryman as she handed it back to him. “Tell him they were refused.”

A short time later, her doorbell rang, announcing the delivery of coffee and her favorite pastries from the café where they’d met. It was accompanied by a note saying, “I’m sorry.”

It was harder to pass them up, but she did. “No,” she said to the delivery person. “Not good enough. Thank you, but no, thank you. Please take them for your coworkers. I hate to see them go to waste.”

Sage was dressed and ready to walk out the door of her apartment when a third delivery arrived. It was matinee tickets for a show at the theater she’d once asked him to go to with her. What had been the reason he hadn’t been able to go that day? She realized he hadn’t actually told her. He’d avoided answering her questions then, just as he was still doing. She handed the tickets back to the delivery person and simply shook her head.

Sage filled her day with all the things that made her happy. She walked around London and people-watched. All the while, she told herself she’d done the right thing. Hadn’t Bella said that one of the reasons she worried about her was because Sage was a pleaser? And that I make excuses for people’s bad behavior because I can’t walk away from someone in pain? Well, everyone has their limit, and I’ve reached mine.

When she returned to her apartment, she read a book and went to sleep early. If he had called that night, she wouldn’t have picked up, but she was still disappointed when no call came.

Where was he going the next day? What did he feel he couldn’t tell her yet? Did he understand that while he was figuring stuff out, she was slowly going insane?

Sage wasn’t a conspiracy theorist. She didn’t look for hidden agendas or lies. She preferred to believe that good triumphed if one had faith in it. People were inherently good, even those who didn’t appear to be at first glance. Once they found something that made them happy, they blossomed like flowers in the sun.

Still, Sage was reluctantly beginning to wonder if Bella’s more cautious view of people didn’t make more sense. There was a very good chance that Wayne Easton was a big, fat liar. Sage didn’t know how big or what his motivation was for not being honest, just that her radar had let her down. It shook her confidence in a process she’d come to trust.

She had a fitful night of sleep, full of dreams of being trapped in a glass-walled maze. Every decision she made was wrong, every path she chose led her back to where she started, and she could see Wayne on the outside of the maze, mocking her for not being able to find her way out.