Resent, Reject, Regret

Chapter 926

Chapter 926 Prying for Answers

“Are you sure? Even if you’re ill, it’s my duty as your fiance to be very concerned.” Brendan narrowed his eyes. “Or are you sulking because I’ve been neglecting you?”

As he spoke, he quietly drew his distance closer and closer to Charlene until his face was only several inches away from her. “I mulled about it for a moment and decided that, yes, I’ve been unfair to you. We are to be married, after all. I’ll be staying here for the night.”

That offer would have sent Charlene straight to rapture if it had happened at literally any other time. At that moment, though? It just made her so panicked she was on the verge of breaking down.

“No!”

She rejected him so immediately and urgently that Brendan stared at her.

“1-1 mean, what about Miss McKinnon? She’s still here in the mansion! I thought about this and, you know, it’s inappropriate to do this to her when she’s pregnant with your kid. We still have a lot of time together, but hers is running out. We should, you know, be the bigger people, right?”

Something lit up in Brendan’s eyes. “Your kindness might be wasted on her.” “I don’t mind,” Charlene smiled weakly and did all she could to put on a convincing act of compassion. “Miss McKinnon’s small- hearted because she knows she can never be your wife. But I’m different. I’m your significant other and the future mistress of the Brighthall family. I need to embody grace and graciousness.”

Brendan’s gaze turned profound. “You’re doing so much. Thank you.”

Charlene gnashed her teeth through the agony. “No, not at all. Go! Keep Miss McKinnon c-company…”

Brendan shot her one last look and left. Charlene trembled in rage as soon as the door clicked into the frame. Worried that throwing a tantrum in her room would attract attention, she could only hide in her bathroom and sweep every item unfortunate enough to be in her line of sight to the floor.

She looked in the mirror and saw a worn-out woman staring back at her. Her eyes turned red. She had sacrificed so much-so she needed a win! She could not afford to lose!

As Brendan came out of her room, Deirdre was nibbling at the food behind the dining table. He joined her, and neither of them spoke.

It was only after she returned to the first floor that Brendan did his usual routine of breaking into her room through the window.

“What are you doing!?” she cried, bewildered. The thought of barricading her windows just kept getting more and more seductive.

Brendan lowered his head and kissed her before rubbing his lips against the edge of her supple lips. “Prying for answers, of course. Wasn’t that what you were hinting at?”

Deirdre was livid. “Hinting at what? I didn’t hint at anything at all!”

He ignored her flimsy denial. He carried her fragile body in his arms and gently set her on the bed. “Oh, really? Then what’s with the hesitation during our call this afternoon?” “Well, it’s about-” Deirdre almost said it aloud before forcing the words back into her throat at the last minute. She had no hard proof that Charlene had sex with other men.

“About what?” Brendan’s eyes were twinkling with a mischievous smile that eluded even himself. As he studied the young woman lying below him, he could not help but tease her.

Deirdre was hard-pressed to answer him and made her frustration obvious by shoving him away. “Can’t you just pretend it was a whim? Like, maybe I knocked myself in the head and said something stupid in that momentary concussion? Just get out already. Have you already forgotten all about that time Mrs. Engel found you hiding in my bedroom, huh?”

Brendan hugged her even more tightly. “Ah, but it’s Charlene who told me to keep your company today.” “Say what? Charlene!?” Deirdre was aghast. “Are you messing with me!?”

What could make Charlene, obsessed with the goal of pulling Brendan away from Deirdre by any means necessary, agree to let him into her room!?

“No, it’s true,” he replied. “I actually offered to stay with her for a bit as reparations for ignoring her these few days. But she was surprisingly very against it. She was even adamant that I stay with you instead, saying that we have ample time to be together while your time with me is finite.”

Brendan pressed his cheek close to the young woman’s ear and exhaled quietly, letting his breath roll into her ear and neck. It felt like the grazing of a featherlight touch or the act of being covered by a wispy shroud. Every tickle his breath elicited was pulsing with sensuality.