“Why does it matter?”
She blinked. Sat back.
He was being paid not to hurt her...
And he knew that last thought was pure bunk. Justification for reaching out for her hand to hold her in her seat.
“I grew up on the outside looking in.” He heard himself telling her something he’d never shared aloud before. “My aunt was great. She loved me and always made me welcome. But she was grieving, too. My mom was her older sister. Their parents divorced when they were little. Their dad remarried and their mom later died of heart failure. She, my aunt, looked at me and missed my mom. It was like I was always the cross on my mother’s grave, never just a part of the family. Or even a full member of the family. I was the outsider—there because of a great tragedy.”
When he started to feel like a sap, Elliott shut up.
“And later?” Marie asked, knocking him for a loop with the look in her eyes. No woman had ever looked at him quite like that. As though she could protect him.
And he couldn’t pretend any longer that he didn’t want her. All to himself.
* * *
“LATER I GREW UP.”
Elliott answered Marie’s question so long after she’d asked it, she had to think a minute about what he was saying and why.
“Of course you grew up,” she said, recognizing that he was trying to wrap up their talk. But she wasn’t done yet. Couldn’t be until she had a clear understanding that there was nothing between them but her own imaginings, conjured up out of her own loneliness, the danger surrounding her friends and forced proximity to the bodyguard. She was driving herself nuts. “And when you grew up, did you ever think about having a family of your own?”
His gaze was piercing as he studied her. She had no idea why. And then he said, “Do you have any idea how it feels to be a foot taller than every other kid in school? To have to duck to enter your high school classroom?”
Marie was shorter than Gabi. Who was only five foot six. “Obviously not.” But she remembered the stares he’d received, they’d received, when they’d been in the warehouse store together, and added, “You were on the outside looking in then, too, weren’t you?”
She knew that kids weren’t generally nice to anyone who was different.
He responded with that half nod of his.
“Surely you dated,” Marie said next. “I mean, you’re tall, probably the tallest man I’ve ever met, but you’re gorgeous, Elliott. You’re never going to convince me you didn’t have girls falling all over you.”
He grinned. And she heard what she’d said. She’d told him she thought he was gorgeous. Her face flamed. But...it wasn’t as if it would be news to him. Presumably he looked in the mirror every morning. He was clean shaven, and that didn’t usually happen all by itself.
“I like women,” he finally said.
And it dawned on her what he was saying.
“You’ve dated a lot.”
“Not until I was out of high school and had grown more comfortable with my size. But yes, I’ve had my fair share of wo
men in my life.”
“You dating anyone now?” She’d asked once before, the first month she’d known him, and the answer had been no. But that could have changed.
“No.”
“Neither am I.” He knew that. Idiot. She’d just been dumped by Burton—a guy who’d been too boring for words. “So, do you want a family?”
“Are you offering to be a part of it?”
Marie blinked. Held her breath. And then started to feel dizzy. Was he flirting with her?
“Sorry,” Elliott said before she’d found her senses. “I just... That was inappropriate. We should be getting upstairs.”
“What if I was offering?”