CHAPTER 48

“You were the most entrancing thing I’d ever seen,” he said, his voice gruff, and she shook her head dismissively.

“Hardly.”

“You still are, Cindy .” He brushed aside her automatic protest. “You’re not some boring, conventional beauty, true. And yeah, you tend to be a little clumsy at times. But you’re unusual, interesting, and to me you’re just so indescribably gorgeous. I never thought that I deserved you. You were too good for the likes of me.”

She didn’t understand that sentiment at all. He was heartbreakingly handsome and she was painfully plain. He came from a background of wealth and privilege while her family had been as poor as church mice. He had been Oxford educated with a master’s degree in business while she had barely made it through high school. It had been a classic Cinderella tale, and Cindy had been the one to feel inadequate when compared to him.

“I should have left you alone,” he was saying, his low voice alive with misery and his eyes filled with such profound sad