Page 80 of A Winter Wish

When Lexie opened her mouth to insist again, Fran held up her hand.

“I’m just going to say one more thing about it, OK? Then I’ll even help you pack, if you want.”

Lexie gestured for her to go ahead.

“For me, being brave was quitting my job and throwing myself into the ether. It was forcing myself to take a risk—and who knows, it might play out badly. But I can still go back to the job if I want to. So my question is, what’s being brave for you? A lot of people think traveling around, moving from place to place is a brave way of living. And it is. It’s amazing. And I know you’ve loved doing it. But is it the thing you want now, even if it scares you?”

Lexie said nothing—silence seemed like a safer bet.

Fran gave her a small smile. “Do what you need to do. I’ll always be here, OK? And just know that there’s a place for you here if you ever change your mind.”

Chapter Thirty

Lexie had her suitcase packed, her flight booked, and a job back in the Austrian Alps lined up by the time she’d worked up the courage to go back into the office. She’d lost track of the number of missed calls from Theo and had deleted several voicemails without listening to them. But much as she didn’t want to admit it, Fran was right—she couldn’t just leave without having a face-to-face conversation.

Autumn was setting in now, with that definite “back to school” feel in the air as people rushed around the city in the morning. It was slightly cooler than it had been in recent weeks, and there were the very first signs of the leaves beginning to turn. Bath would look beautiful in the autumn, Lexie thought—the light would suit the golden hues, and the russet colors would no doubt compliment the sandy buildings. As she pushed the door to the shop open, she felt a pang of sadness that she wouldn’t be here to see it.

Theo was hovering over the computer Harry was working at when Lexie walked in. His expression of relief when he saw her made her insides tighten, and she straightened her spine against it. She would not let herself get drawn in.

They both walked toward each other, meeting in the middle of the shop. She tilted her chin up. “I just came to tell you that I’m leaving,” she said, before he could lurch into anything.

“You’re what?”

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Harry watching them. Theo clearly noticed too, because he grabbed her hand.

“Come with me,” he snapped, and pulled her through the office and into the back room, past Ange, who had appeared balancing three cups of tea in her hands. She gave them a quizzical look but said nothing.

Theo shut the door behind them, and Lexie pressed herself against it as he moved away from her, tugging both hands through his hair.

“Look,” he began, and she steeled herself.

She’d been expecting this—an excuse, some kind of pleading explanation. So let him get it out, then she could go.

“Yes, the contract you saw was about trying to cut you out.”

Her heart jolted. She hadn’t been expecting him to come out with it like that. “You—”

“But that was from the beginning of the year, Lexie.” His hands dropped to his sides as he looked at her out of those coal eyes. “Mike had the idea before you’d even agreed to come back—before France. And at the time I thought, well, why not—because I’d spent five years working for this company, and you were acting like you didn’t give a shit and I wanted to keep it going, because I thought that was what Richard would have wanted, because I thought I owed it to him to protect his legacy no matter what.” He took a careful step toward where she was still pressed against the door, and she eyed him warily.

“I did give a shit,” she said, her voice quieter than she would have liked. But already, she was speaking in past tense. Already, she was cutting herself out of it.

“I know that now. Of course I know that now. And things changed.”

She folded her arms, gave him a narrow-eyed look. “What changed, exactly?”

“I got to know you,” he said simply.

“But the paperwork I saw—”

“Was old. Lexie, you saw it hadn’t been signed, right? It was an old contract, I promise you—I can show you the dates to prove it. Mike was here bringing up the idea again, trying to push because he wants a cut, but I’d already said no when you walked in. It was a stupid thing to think about in the first place. But I wasn’t—I’m not—thinking anything like it anymore.”

She said nothing, and he strode toward Ange’s desk, tapped away at the keyboard, then turned the computer monitor to face her. “Here.”

She glanced at it, though she was a little too far away to see what he was showing her—some sort of email, apparently. “This is an email chain between me and the solicitor, asking about cementing you as director in the future. If you want it. I wasn’t going to say anything, not until the end of the year, because I knew you might not want it. But I wanted to check the option was there.”

She said nothing, though her insides twisted again. The future. He’d been thinking about the future—the future of the company, sure. But with her. She’d been ready to sign an apartment lease—and he’d been ready to commit to running the company together.

She took a steadying breath. Because that was the problem, wasn’t it? She’d been ready to do that, for him, but what did that mean for the part of her that loved her life of living all over the map? It was a part she didn’t want to lose. And if she put him first—if she gave up everything just for a relationship with him, if she stayed in Bath and stayed with the company—what would happen if the relationship were to break down in the end? What would be left of her, who she was, if she did that?