He lifts my chin and looks down into my eyes. The passion I could hear in his voice now flares in his depths.
‘For as long as we want it.’
He seals his words with a kiss and I close my eyes. A solitary tear escapes to trail down my cheek but I kiss him harder. I kiss him to block out the sadness. I kiss him to forget the pain. I kiss him to make the present matter more.
I kiss him until he’s making love to me and we are as close as two people can be.
CHAPTER EIGHT
I WAKE TO the realisation that I’m not alone—to the realisation that I am more at home in my bed than I have ever been. And I know it’s because she’s here, her naked body wrapped around mine.
She’s snoring softly, fast asleep, and I lie still, not wanting to wake her. Not wanting this moment to end. Even though I know it has to.
A woman like her has a schedule that doesn’t stop for the weekend, no matter how much I wish it could. How much I wish reality could be different. How much I wish we lived in a world where she and I stand a chance. But I’m no fool.
The second she learns of my contract with her brother, it will all come to a swift and crushing end.
Won’t it?
It has to end—that’s a given. But maybe it would be better all round if my involvement with her brother never came to light. If I can see him off with nothing and keep her reputation intact we can just go our separate ways. No harm, no foul.
My chest tightens, my hold around her with it, and I force myself to relax. It’s the only way it can end. Any other possibility leads to her being hurt, and that far outweighs my own concerns.
I ease out from beneath her and set her down on my pillow. She mumbles in her sleep and for a second I fear she’ll wake. I stay stock-still. I can’t face her yet. Not with the war of emotions so clearly written on my face. Instead she pulls my pillow further down beneath her head and breathes deeply, her body relaxing, her face blissfully at peace once again. And I’m so lost in that look, her beauty, everything she has come to mean.
You need to move. Now.
I slip from the bed and quietly move around the room, pulling on some workout gear and heading downstairs to my gym. I need to work this out of me, focus on pounding the treadmill, the punchbag—anything but the chaos inside.
Not that it works. I’m just as messed-up over an hour later, having showered, donned some tracksuit bottoms and sorted breakfast: freshly brewed coffee and an array of whatever I could muster on a tray before me.
But as I walk through my bedroom door, I find my feet rooted. She’s awake and stretching, her beautiful body naked from the waist up. She freezes when she spies me, her eyes widening, her arms still in mid-air, and then slowly she brings them down.
‘What?’ she says, clearly spying something in my expression—not to mention the fact that I haven’t moved or said a word.
Way to go in freaking her out and failing to hide it. And you’re supposed to be an experienced PI, for fuck’s sake.
I walk towards her and plaster on a smile. ‘I’m just struggling with the realisation that there’s a beautiful woman in my bed.’
She rolls her eyes and wrinkles her nose in that cute little rabbit move which has my gut flip-flopping—
Your gut? Who are you kidding? Your heart, more like.
‘Please don’t tell me you’re one of those.’
My eyes narrow. ‘One of those...?’
‘Yeah—one of those men with a woman-free bed.’ She goes all dramatic and flutters her hands. ‘“Yeah, I’m gonna shag you until you walk like John Wayne, but I won’t let you into my bed unless you are the one.” That kind of man.’
She waggles her brow and laughs as she says it, and the move cracks me up too.
‘No, I’m not one of those.’
Her laughter dies from her eyes and I see what my admission has cost her. Shit. I recall what she asked of me last night about wanting more. Did she want to be the one? Did I want her to be?
Stupid, dangerous question.
But I can give her my honesty. About this at least.