Total pages in book: 86
Estimated words: 82868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 82868 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 414(@200wpm)___ 331(@250wpm)___ 276(@300wpm)
My insides swirl with indecision. The desire to please him is almost overwhelming, but I can’t help doubting if staying is the right thing to do.
“But I’m only gone two weeks. After that I can enjoy all those things about you back in London. Whatever you want to do is the right choice.”
My heart inches higher in my chest at his casual reference to the future. He’s not trying to get his own way. He’s just suggesting possibilities.
This is new territory for me—and it feels good.
I need to go back to London. If I stay, we’ll start off this relationship in the wrong place—with it being all about me pleasing him. Maybe whatever is between us won’t last, but if it does, this isn’t how it should start.
“I want to go back to London.” I have to take a breath because I can’t quite believe I’ve said the words. “It’s not about not wanting to be with you.” I want to make that very clear. “It’s not about not wanting…whatever this is between us. But you need to work and I…I need to be pursuing my dreams too. I need to find another job. A good one that pays well.”
“You have a job,” he says.
I tilt my head. “I resign.”
“You don’t like the idea of an office romance?”
I smile and shake my head at him and his lopsided grin. He knows I can feel his lips on every part of my body right now.
“You need to close the office. You know that more than anyone. And I can’t—I won’t enable you to stifle your dreams anymore. When you leave here, you’ll have a completed manuscript. You won’t need a pretend consulting room in a very expensive and real office on Wimpole Street.”
He groans and pushes his fork into his plate. “So on Thursdays and Fridays, what am I going to do?”
“What you’ve been doing every Thursday and Friday since I met you. You’re going to write.”
“It seems like you’re making a lot of decisions for me right about now.” He doesn’t sound angry, more disappointed.
“I’m making a decision for me, not to stay here to prop up your dreams but to go after my own. In relation to Wimpole Street, I’m just telling you what you already know.”
He nods his head. “I know. But don’t worry about your job. I’ll keep you on the payroll until you can find something else.”
I’m grateful to him, but I don’t want his charity. I want to do things for myself—I want to get on with the rest of my life.
“I’ll be fine, Zach. I’ll take a look at your lease if you send it to me. I can work out how you give notice.”
“Sure. That would be great. I suppose I just want to suspend reality a little longer. I want to do nothing but write all day, hang out with you in the evenings. It’s selfish, but I want you to stay.”
His words warm me from the inside out, but I have to hold firm.
“If it makes you feel better, when you get your book deal, we can come back and get snowed in again.”
He looks up at me from under his floppy hair and his expression tugs at my insides. My instinct is to cave and tell him I’ll stay, that I want to make the next two weeks as easy as possible for him. But I’ve been that girl, I’ve done that. And it didn’t work out. It’s time to put what I need first for once. “Is that a promise?”
“Absolutely,” I say. “I can’t wait to be snowed in with you again.”
Twenty-Four
Ellie
It seems entirely ridiculous that I’m sitting in front of a laptop in Zach’s waiting room when I know we don’t have any patients and we won’t have any patients.
Zach insisted on paying me a month’s notice, so I’m going to cancel the website and work out how to service notice on his lease. Until the month is out, this is where I’m going to stay—even though he told me to work from home. It doesn’t feel right while he’s paying me. Anyway, I have so little to do, I can trawl through the jobs on LinkedIn and ring the agencies from my desk.
I’m halfway through an application for an executive assistant role at a dental practice when Jen sticks her head around the door. “Hey, stranger. How was the trip? I’ve not seen you for ages.” She comes in and plonks herself on one of the visitor chairs by my desk.
I don’t want to get into how I messed up with the ferries and ended up snowed in with only my hot boss for company—Jen would assume we got naked, even if we hadn’t.
“Got him his reports and then he said I could take some annual leave while he was up there working.”