An Arranged Affair

Untitled Part 63

Phillips POV

The week passed for me in painful agony.

I woke up every day and she wasn't there. I went to sleep and she wasn't there. I saw here everywhere I went, I imagined her sitting on the balcony talking to me during breakfast, sitting in my library reading a book, curled up in my favorite chair. I heard her voice, her laughter everywhere I went, felt her presence in every room, but she wasn't here, she had gone home.

Her father had recovered very quickly after he had woken up fully. Within days he had passed all the doctors tests, was eating normally and back in good health. I remembered how scared she was when she asked go with her parents to give her mum a hand.

I guess we still had to work hard on our trust issues with each other.

It was a week, only a week, and it was driving me mad. She hadn't even come back home to get some clothes, the clothes I had arranged were more than enough she had said and she probably still had some more back at her parents. But I was worried. What if she had decided not to come back? I shook my head, she wouldn't – would she? Not after everything we had been through so far?

It had been a hard week. The hotel workers strike had gone from bad to worse and I now had to fly over there to sort it out myself, cursing myself for the day I let my mother talk me into hiring my idiot cousin as the manager there. He wasn't even a first cousin, he was the son of her cousin.

And now he was fucking up one of my favourite investments.

Hard days at the office had worn me down and going back to an empty house made me realize how lonely I had become and how much light she had brought into my life.

But now as I drove down the familiar gravel driveway my heart sped up and suddenly, I was nervous.

Shit I hadn't been this nervous since the first time I kissed a girl as a teenager.

We had been at opposite ends of the world this week. When I called her or text her she was busy. When she called me I was in the middle of meetings. We had barely spoken. She was supposed to come home tomorrow, but I wasn't going to wait.

I parked the car and started walking to the living quarters, I hadn't told her that I was coming, it was part of the surprise, and as if her heart was calling my own my phone rang, it was her.

' hey,' she said, her voice sounded tired.

' hey yourself, ' I answered. ' I was starting to think you had forgotten about me.'

' you didn't return my last call, and I thought....anyway it doesn't matter what I thought, I'm glad you answered.'

' how's your father?'

' Good, better, he seems happy I'm home. It's been tough, mums been driving me mad, running this place has been hard on her without Papa. My brother had to go back to Uni so I've been by myself between my parents,' she sighed.' I just called to find out what time to expect Stanford to pick me up tomorrow.' She paused. " Its so stupid, but I've missed you."

My heart did a happy leap, I took the path away from the main door that I guessed led to the back of the house, and sure enough, there she was, leaning on a post on the veranda , her back to me, she was wearing her favourite bohemian skirt and a white singlet, her hair was pulled up into a messy bun. Of all the designer clothes in her wardrobe, this was her favourite outfit.

She looked so beautiful.

' Guess what I'm doing right now?' I asked

' What?'

' I am looking at the most beautiful woman in the world.'

I heard her breath hitch and watched as she steadied herself against the post and it felt like forever before she said something again. I kept up slowly behind her.