Danica sucked in a sharp breath. His unexpected rebuke caught her completely off guard. Shouldn't he be blaming Summer? But he was accusing her of being careless.
"Don't forget Noel went to her on his own," Gideon said. "Summer didn't approach the boy."
Danica looked away from him. She couldn't deny what Gideon had said. She had also seen in the footage how Noel had walked out of the ice cream shop himself and went into the supermarket as if an unseen force guided him straight to Summer.
A bitter heat rose in her chest.
'Of all people,' she seethed inwardly, her fists trembling slightly on her lap. 'For this, you deserve a punishment.'
Noel needed to learn his mistake, and she would make sure he did so that he could never repeat such a mistake. But she couldn't let Gideon think that Noel was safe with Summer. She was afraid that with Gideon's growing trust in Summer, she might lose everything she had painstakingly constructed over the years.
