As soon as she walked off, Shantel folded her hands together on the table, studying him with that piercing gaze of hers.
"So, are you going to tell me the real reason you came here? Or are we still pretending this is all some charming gesture on your part?"
Richard leaned back, eyes locked on hers. "I told you. I missed you."
Beautiful as that sounded, Shantel refused to fall for it. Richard was not the kind of man to leave his business and run across the world just to see a woman… especially someone ridden with so many scandals like her. So she pressed.
"And?"
"And I wanted to make sure you were okay," he said, again completely dismantling all of Shantel's doubts and prejudices. "And perhaps check on your grandmother…only if it's okay by you. I figured showing up might be my only shot at seeing you again."
Shantel looked down at her hands, lips pressed together. "You could've called."
