that how he really felt? Did he really love her that much? She could hardly imagine him so vulnerable. “Daddy, you could never lose me. You’re my father. I’ll always love you.”
“I didn’t see it that way. And I was wrong.” He took her hands in his. “I don’t want you to make the same mistake that I did. I let the love of my life go, and I never stopped regretting it.”
She didn’t have to ask who. She’d heard the rumors. “Cynthia Newport.”
He nodded, looking so sad. “I tried to fill the void, but I was never able to let her go. Learn from my mistakes. Don’t do that to yourself. Talk to Roman. He loves you.”
Her father didn’t understand. “He lied to me. That’s not love.”
“He was protecting you.”
“He thought I was guilty.”
“No, he was fighting to prove that you weren’t. You have no idea what you got yourself into. As a part of Dax’s campaign, you were implicated in the fraud. You could have been prosecuted. Roman made a deal with the FBI. Your flash drive in exchange for full immunity.”
“So why didn’t he just tell me the truth? When the FBI called, why didn’t he tell me?”
“He couldn’t.”
“He didn’t trust me.”
“It wasn’t about trust. He was under the thumb of the FBI. What they did was nothing shy of blackmail. He couldn’t tell you, and if he did you could have both been prosecuted. He couldn’t take that chance.”
Through the darkness in her soul a dim shimmer of light appeared. She thought about the way Roman had taken care of her and protected her when he thought her life was in danger.
“He loves you, Princess. Don’t you see that? He did what he had to, knowing that when he told you the truth he could lose you forever. But it was a chance he had to take. He loved you so much, and wanted you to be safe, so he took the gamble.”
And lost. But she hadn’t even let him explain. She had been so wrapped up in her own pain she couldn’t even make herself listen.
The dim light grew a little brighter. “How do you know all of this?”
“He confided in me Thursday night.”
She blinked. Roman had confided in Sutton? His mortal enemy? It was almost too far-fetched to believe. And if he really had done it just to protect her...
Once again, a flicker of hope broke through the gloom. Was it possible that this wasn’t really the end? Shouldn’t she at least give him a chance to explain?
He squeezed her hand. “Talk to him, Grace.”
She had been pretty awful to him Thursday night. “What if he doesn’t want to talk to me?”
“He does.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do. I know that over the years I’ve expected a lot from you, and I’m asking you now, for the last time, to do one more thing for me.”
“What, Daddy?”
“I’m asking you to trust me.”
When he said it like that, with so much love in his eyes, how could she tell him no?
For five days following the wedding, Roman barely existed, trapped in his own personal hell. The hell he had created. Again. He hadn’t eaten or slept. He hadn’t been back to work. He’d basically wandered around the house in a daze, trying to figure out a way to fix this, and coming up with nothing.
Sutton had been wrong about her forgiving him. And as every new day passed, he knew it was less and less likely that he would ever hear from her again. In his efforts to protect Gracie he’d hurt her so deeply that she had completely shut him out.
It hadn’t been the first time, but it would definitely be the last. She was clearly done with him. She wouldn’t even let him explain, and he didn’t blame her. Why would she?
He needed to pack her things so he could send them to her, but he hadn’t been able to make himself do it. Everything was exactly as she’d left it, and there wasn’t a square inch of his home that didn’t remind him of her. It didn’t even feel like home anymore. Not without her there. She’d left her mark indelibly on his entire world. He would have to sell his house and move if he was ever going to have a chance of forgetting her. But he doubted even that would work.
But at least she was safe, and protected from prosecution. At least he had given her that. And she would never know how much, and for how long, he had loved her. It hadn’t even been clear to him until he lost her.
Around two his doorbell rang, and for a second he felt an actual sliver of hope that it might be her, but that was just him living in a fantasy world. She was gone. Out of his life. And the sooner he accepted that the better off he would be.
But when he opened the door, he was sure that he was hallucinating from lack of sleep, because that couldn’t possibly be Gracie standing there on his porch. She looked up at him, her face expressionless, as if she were waiting for him to say something.
All he could come up with was “Back for your things?”
Without warning she launched herself at him so forcefully he stumbled backward, and when she wrapped her arms around him, Roman was so stunned that for a second he didn’t even hug her back.
Now he knew he had to be hallucinating. But when he pulled her close to him, she couldn’t have felt more real. He buried his face in the softness of her hair and breathed her in.
Yep, she was definitely there. The question was why.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding on tight. “I’m so sorry.”
Wait. What?
She was sorry? That made no sense. He must have misheard.
He peeled her away from him and held her at arm’s length, managing a dumbfounded-sounding “What?”
“I said I’m sorry.”
Was this some kind of sick joke she was playing on him? “What could you possibly have done to be sorry for? I’m the one who’s sorry. I lied to you.”
“And I loved you, and that I trusted you, then I didn’t even give you a chance to explain. I was so angry and so hurt that all I cared about was protecting myself. I didn’t even think about you and how hard it must have been keeping that from me. And the risk you took to keep me safe.”
He wanted to pinch himself to make sure that he was actually awake.
“I wish I could take credit for realizing what I was doing, but it took a talking-to from my father to open my eyes.”
Wait
