“Stop pouting and be happy for us.” Madison turned back to me. “Come back and work for me. I need you. Someone will have to coordinate with the wedding planner...”
Wedding planner!
“And don’t worry,” Jason said to me kindly. “You’ll find a real boyfriend someday, Di. Great girl like you. It’s bound to happen, even if it takes a while...”
Violently, I held up a trembling hand, unable to bear another patronizing word. My heart was collapsing in my chest, squeezing into hard little pieces, about to fly out of my ribs like bullets. In another moment, I’d weep in front of them, and then I really would have to die.
“Darling.” Edward purred behind me, suddenly wrapping his arms around me. Pulling me back protectively against his body, he murmured, “Didn’t you tell them?”
I looked back at him blankly. “Tell them?”
He smiled down at me, his expression tender, his dark blue gaze caressing mine. “About us.”
“Us?” I said.
“Us.” Edward looked at me as if it were all he could do right now not to lift me up in his arms and carry me upstairs to bed. No man had looked at me like that before. Not ever. The full seductive force of his gaze was a blast of heat, an intoxicating drug that made every part of me yearn to tremble and unfold like a flower. “Diana, why didn’t you tell them...” he stroked back a tendril of my hair, “that we’re lovers?”
What? My heart stopped beating.
“What?” Madison said.
“What?” Jason said.
Edward looked down at me with concern. “But darling, you’re chilled to the bone. Your clothes are wet. Were you taking the dog on a walk?”
Teeth chattering—and not just from cold—I nodded like a fool.
He gave me a slow, sensual smile. “Why don’t you go upstairs to our room—” our room? I thought dumbly “—and change. We’ll wait.”
“I will not wait,” Madison snapped. “Not until you agree to come back and plan our wedding.” Looking between Edward and me, no doubt comparing his perfect gorgeousness to my slovenly mess, she added suspiciously, “And I don’t believe for a second that the two of you...”
Edward didn’t even look her way. “Actually, Diana,” he whispered, twining a long muddy, tangled tendril of my hair as if it were silken perfection, “I think I’ll come upstairs. Help you out of these cold, wet clothes.”
Any woman could get warm instantly, just by looking up into Edward’s hot dark gaze. Had I wandered into some strange parallel universe, where I was the beautiful movie star, instead of Madison? Had I fallen on my walk and hit my head on a rock?
I felt my stepsister’s gaze travel over us both, from the way I was standing to the way that Edward supported my arm. There was new doubt in her melodious voice as she said, “You’re really—together?”
“Only recently,” Edward said, smiling down at me hungrily, cupping my cheek with his hand. As if he were already thinking about what he intended to do to me in bed. “I wanted Diana from the moment we met. But she tortured me,” his eyes traced mine, “making me wait. And wait. The sexiest, most desirable woman in the world.”
“She’s just a physical therapist.” Madison sounded grumpy.
Edward finally looked at her. “Yes. A healer. And what Diana knows about the human body—” He exhaled, looking at me in wonder. “No wonder she’s the most amazing lover I’ve ever had.”
My body flashed hot, then cold.
“The two of you are in love?” Jason said, dumbfounded.
“Love?” Edward snorted. “No.” He looked down at me, stroking my cheek, and I felt his fingertips against my skin. “What we have is purely physical. Sex. And fire.”