Page 49 of Untamed Billionaire's Innocent Bride

Because that was the trouble with allowing herself to want anything at all when she’d done without for so long. She wasn’t satisfied with half measures, or a life spent giving everything she had to a man who not only couldn’t return it, but whom she didn’t want anything from.

She didn’t want to sacrifice herself. It turned out that despite her choice of profession, she wasn’t a martyr. Or she didn’t want to be one.

Not anymore.

She knew what she wanted. Because she knew what it felt like now to be wanted desperately in return—no matter that Dominik might not have admitted that. She still knew.

He had stayed so long at Combe Manor. He had showed her things that she’d never dared dream about before. And he had taken her, over and over again, like a man possessed.

Like a man who feared losing her the same way she’d feared losing him.

If he hadn’t cared, he wouldn’t have snuck away. She knew that, too.

Lauren looked around the office that was more her home than her flat had ever been. The couch where she’d slept so many nights—including the night before her wedding. The windows that looked out over the city she’d loved so desperately not because she required its concrete and buildings, she understood now, but because it had been her constant. The one kind of parent that wouldn’t turn its back on her.

But she didn’t need any of these things any longer.

Lauren already had everything she needed. Maybe she always had, but she knew it now. And it was time instead to focus on what she wanted.

“And I have valued these years, Mr. Combe,” she said now, lifting her head and looking Matteo in the eye. “More than you know. But it’s time for me to move on.” She smiled when he started to protest. “Please consider this my notice. I will train my replacement. I’ll find her myself and make certain she is up to your standards. Never fear.”

“Lauren.” His voice was kind then.

But it wasn’t his kindness she wanted.

“I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “But I can’t do this anymore.”

And that night she lay in her bed in the flat she paid for but hardly knew. She stared at her ceiling, and when that grew old, she moved to look out the window instead.

There was concrete everywhere. London rooftops, telephone wires and the sound of traffic in the distance. The home she’d made. The parent she’d needed. London had been all things to her, but in the end, it was only a city. Her favorite city, true. But if it was any more than that, she’d made it that way.

And she didn’t want that any longer. She didn’t need it. She craved...something else. Something different.

Something wild, a voice in her whispered.

Lauren thought about want. About need. About the crucial distinction between the two, and why it had taken her so long to see it.

And the next morning she set off for Hungary again.

By the time she made it to the mountain village nestled there at the edge of the forest it was well into the afternoon.

But she didn’t let that stop her. She left the hired car near the inn she’d stayed in on the last night of her life before she’d met Dominik and everything changed, and she began to walk.

She didn’t mind the growing dark, down there on the forest floor. The temperature dropped as she walked, but she had her red wrap and she pulled it closer around her.

The path was just as she remembered it, clear and easy to follow, if hard going against the high, delicate heels she wore. Because of course she wore them.

Lauren might have felt like a new woman. But that didn’t mean she intended to betray herself with sensible shoes.

On she walked.

And she thought about fairy tales. About girls who found their way into forests and thought they were lost, but found their way out no matter what rose up to stop them. Especially if what tried to stop them was themselves.

It was only a deep, dark forest if she didn’t know where she was going, she told herself. But she did. And all around her were pretty trees, fresh air and a path to walk upon.

No bread crumbs. No sharp teeth and wolves. No witches masquerading as friends, tucked up in enchanted cottages with monstrous roses and questionable pies.

No foreboding, no wicked spells.