Elevating Eve (Fairford Affairs #4)

18. Eve

CHAPTER 18

Eve

F rustration still roiled inside Eve as she hurried through the new building the next morning. It wouldn’t take much more for it to start boiling over.

Jonathan’s heavy handedness last night had made her want to scream. Not only did he drag her two towns over to the nearest hospital, where— shocker —all they did was clean and bandage the various wounds. But then he insisted she sleep at his house, once again refusing to drive her back to her car.

“Why?” she demanded when he had announced his intentions, crossing her arms and glaring at him.

Keeping his eyes on the road, he’d said, “You’re hurt. I want to keep an eye on you—make sure you’re okay.” As if she just had surgery and needed a temporary caretaker.

“Jonathan—” she started.

“I know you want to keep looking for the emerald,” he’d interrupted, finally glancing her way. The hint of an apology lurked deep in his eyes. “But it’ll have to wait. Everything will be exactly as you left it tomorrow.”

Only that wasn’t true. She skidded to a stop halfway down the upstairs corridor, eyes going wide. Of the twenty suites on this floor, only one of them had a door.

The one she’d worked on yesterday.

Something that sounded startlingly like a growl came out of her as she ran the rest of the way to the door. There was no point in trying the handle, but she did it anyway.

Locked. Of course it was locked.

Her hands balled into fists. The dozens of tiny injuries all stung, and a stab of genuine pain emanated from the larger cut on her palm. Ignoring the discomfort, she went right back downstairs, stalking into the enormous ballroom that made up most of the first floor.

Perched atop a sixteen-foot ladder, Lainey worked on the wiring for one of the enormous Venetian glass chandeliers. Two of her stronger employees stood on either side of an adjacent ladder, holding the custom-made light fixture half a foot below the ceiling while their boss worked.

“Lainey,” she started, unable to keep the fury out of her voice.

“Not a good time,” the other woman answered in a distracted tone.

Undeterred, Eve said, “Why is there a door on room 206?”

Lainey’s hands stilled, and after a moment, she sighed. “Mr. Hale texted me last night. He asked me to have some workers come in early to install the door and lock before you got here.”

An icy cold spread through her, starting in the center of her chest.

How. Fucking. Dare he.

“Give me the key,” she demanded.

“I don’t have one.” Lainey fidgeted with the wire stripper on the top platform of the ladder. “He told me to only make one copy and put it in his office.”

“Goddamnit, Lainey!” Eve shouted, so loud that the two men on the second ladder jumped, almost dropping the absurdly expensive chandelier. “This is bullshit, and you know it!”

Looking down at her for the first time since she entered the room, Lainey at least had the good grace to appear remorseful. “I’m sorry, Eve. He explained what happened, and I know how much you want to get in there. But he owns the damn building. I didn’t have a choice.”

With a disgusted sound, Eve whirled around and hurried from the room, heading straight through the front doors and outside. As she stormed through the garden, she looked up at the third-floor window of Jonathan’s office. It didn’t surprise her in the least to find him standing there, looking down at her with no expression on his face.

Eyes narrowing, she ran the rest of the way into the house, sprinting straight past a startled Remy, who called out after her. Ignoring him, she went through the house as fast as her legs could carry her, bursting through the office door without knocking. “Give me the fucking key,” she demanded between gasping breaths.

By now, Jonathan sat rigid behind his desk, hands folded placidly on the desktop in front of him. “Why don’t you sit down,” he said, voice as devoid of emotion as his face.

Not moving from her spot by the door, Eve took several moments to get her breathing back under control. In a low, dangerously calm voice, she said again, “Give me. The fucking. Key.”

With a soft, almost inaudible sigh, Jonathan stood and walked around the side of the desk. “I’m doing this for your own good,” he said once he stood a few feet in front of her.

“You don’t get to decide what’s for my own good,” she spat. “Only I get to do that.”

Frustration flashed in his eyes, but he repressed it immediately. “I’m not being unreasonable here, and deep down, I think you know that. You’re hurt, Evie. Wait until you’ve healed, and then you can destroy that bathroom to your heart’s content. Just make sure you wear protective gear next time.”

Eve wanted to start yelling. To pound her fists against his chest. To call him every horrible name she could think of and, unlike last night, actually mean every word of it.

Breathing slowly through her nose, she counted in her head until the most violent of those desires subsided. She made it all the way to a hundred and fifteen.

“If you had talked to me about this, maybe I would’ve been okay with it.” Probably not, but she may have gone along with it anyway just to appease him. “But you pulled this shit behind my back. That’s fucked up, Jonathan. That’s really fucked up.”

“You’re hurt,” he said again, as if that excused everything. “I?— ”

“I have a few cuts,” she said, flinging her bandaged hands up in the air. “The nurse said I didn’t even need to be there. Don’t pretend you didn’t hear him.”

Jonathan didn’t answer, his face as stony and unreadable as ever.

“I freaked out last night when I realized the emerald was missing,” she said. “I admit it. But I’m fine . Give me the key and let me get back to work.”

Pity entered his dark eyes then. Fucking pity. “I know this is important to you, but it’s not worth injuring yourself even m?—”

“You don’t understand,” Eve interrupted.

His lips compressed into a tight, angry line. “Of course I understand. Or did you forget that my father died last week.”

“Oh, it must have slipped my mind,” she shot back, laying on the sarcasm as thick as she could. “How silly of me.”

Lips thinning even more, he took several seconds to compose himself before responding. “Be careful. You’re on very thin ice right now.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she said, glaring. “You still have the rest of your family. You have a million things that belonged to your dad—two fucking houses full of his shit.” She knew that had been a low blow, but as pissed off as she was right now, she didn’t care. There would be time for regret later. “But this ring is the only fucking thing I have left. So do not sit there and tell me you understand what I’m feeling right now.”

Anger burned bright in his eyes while she spoke. But he tamped it down by the time she finished, his face so devoid of expression, it looked like he’d had one too many injections of Botox. “I’m trying to protect you,” he said in a robotic voice.

“I’m not a damsel in distress, and you can’t hide me in a fucking tower!” she shouted, fisting her hands in her hair so hard it hurt. “You’ve elevated me so high, I can’t even see the ground anymore, and I hate it. Why can’t you get that through your thick fucking head?”

“Eve,” he said, his voice infuriatingly low and calm. “I don’t think this is a good time to discuss this. We’re both too upset. Why don’t we take a few minutes to calm down and?—”

“Fuck you,” she interrupted, eyes narrowing to furious slits. “Don’t patronize me. ”

His face remained deliberately blank, but his hand gave him away. It twitched, as if he longed to take her over his knee and spank her into submission. “I’m not?—”

“Yes, you are,” she snapped, her gaze homing in on his hand. “And before you get any ideas, emerald. Emerald, emerald, emerald. We are talking right now. Nothing else.”

Closing his eyes, Jonathan took several deep breaths. “Fine,” he said through clenched teeth. He opened his eyes, fixing her with a hard look. “Say what you have to say.”

A pair of tears escaped her eyes as she let out a ragged sigh. “I know how hard it’s been for you to lose your dad. I’m so, so sorry you’re going through that. But you can’t use it as an excuse to smother me. I can’t breathe , Jonathan. You have to let me breathe.”

He staggered back two steps, as if the words had been a physical blow to his chest. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You literally won’t let me go home. When I’m at your house, you won’t let me out of your sight. You didn’t even let me shower by myself today, for fuck’s sake.” She ticked off each example on her fingers. “You forced me to go to the hospital against my will. You went behind my back to have that door installed. And now here you are, telling me what I am and am not allowed to do. It’s too much, Jonathan. I can’t take it anymore.”

He blinked at her in what appeared to be genuine dismay. “I’m your Dom,” he managed after the silence stretched on for far too long. “It’s my job to tell you what you can and can’t do.”

“In bed,” she clarified, over-enunciating both words. “You’re my Dom in bed . You get to tell me what to do in bed . The rest of the time, you’re only my boyfriend.”

“Only your boyfriend?” For all the understanding on his face and in his voice, she may as well have been speaking in a different language.

For fuck’s sake. This was what she got for dating a professional Dom. “I have no interest in dating someone who doesn’t let me make my own decisions,” she told him, her tone leaving no room for arguments. “I did that shit for sixteen years, and I’m not doing it again. The way you’ve been treating me since we got back from California...it’s stopping right now. You need to figure out if you can handle that or not.”

Standing there with his mouth hanging slightly open, he stared at her as if she just sprouted a second head. He didn’t say a single word.

Her resolve firmed like cement drying, morphing into something unbreakable. If a woman being in charge of her own decisions shocked him this much, this relationship had been doomed from the start. Better to know that now, before she wasted even more of her time.

“I guess you can’t,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Goodbye, Jonathan.” As she turned and walked away from him, dozens of tiny fractures spread through her heart.