Page 87 of Love Bomb

“If you’re done ogling my bum,” Bain said, startling her. “Food is ready.”

“I wasn’t ogling you.” Rona smiled at the pile of eggs with genuine appreciation.

“Yes, you were. I called your name a couple of times and when you didn’t answer, I looked over my shoulder.” He sat beside her. “You were drooling.”

“Was not.” She took a bite of buttered toast and moaned. Had anything ever tasted so good?

Bain’s eyes darkened. “Rona, you’re killing me here,” he said.

Slowly, Rona placed the toast back on her plate and took a deep breath. It was time to talk.

“I realized something last night,” she said.

“That cats are easier than babies?” He grinned at her.

“That too,” she agreed. “But something a bit more important. I had a revelation, if you will.”

“I’m all ears.” Bain demolished the food in front of him while he waited for her to share.

Rona placed her palms flat on her thighs to stop them from shaking. “I realized I was angry at you.”

“I’ll admit, proposing with my dick hanging out wasn’t as romantic as it could have been,” Bain said. “But it still bears consideration.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She glared at him before taking yet another deep breath. Man, he was infuriating. “That isn’t what I’m talking about anyway. I thought my problem with you was that I didn’t want to be treated as disposable, like your other women.”

“Rona, I⁠—”

“No,” she interrupted. “Hear me out first. Turns out that’s not the reason I was afraid to sleep with you. It’s stupid to ask for a guarantee for tomorrow, when neither of us knows what will happen, or how things will turn out between us. Which is why your proposal was dumb.”

“Again,” Bain said, “if you’d just let me explain the reasoning behind it⁠—”

“Don’t even bother.” She held up a hand. “What I’m trying to say is that the real reason I was hesitant to sleep with you is that I’ve never forgiven you for abandoning me.”

Bain sucked in a breath. His food suddenly forgotten. Not that there was much left on his plate anyway.

He pinned her with his laser focus. “When have I ever abandoned you?”

Rona swallowed hard. “When I was taken from Invertary. You never stopped them from taking me away and you never came to get me. You did nothing.”

“Rona.” Her name carried such pain.

“It’s okay,” Rona said, wrapping her arms around herself. “I know how unreasonable I’m being. There was nothing you could have done to stop my parents from taking me away. And you wouldn’t have been able to track me down afterward either. You were just a kid too, really. And my parents would never have given you any information about me anyway. I know all this. Logically, I mean. But emotionally, I felt hurt and abandoned.”

She took a shaky breath as he stared at her intently.

“I wanted you to come after me,” she confessed in a whisper. “I wanted you to want me enough to look for me. And I haven’t been able to let that go. I’m so sorry, Bain. I know none of it was your fault. And I shouldn’t have held you responsible for what happened to me.”

Bain pushed his plate away. “I tried to find you,” he said.

Rona’s gaze shot to his. “No,” she whispered.

He nodded solemnly. “I went to Edinburgh, in the hopes of making someone at your grandfather’s company tell me where you were. I was worried and I wanted to make sure you were okay. They wouldn’t tell me anything. So, I started calling schools and, well, that didn’t work either.”

“They wouldn’t have given out students’ names.” She was in awe of his revelation.

Bain reached out and brushed her hair back from her face. “So I went to the most expensive school I could find and hung around looking for you, until a couple of cops moved me on.”

“I didn’t know,” Rona whispered.