Kit went very still, alert, like a panther about to pounce. ‘You still feel it too, don’t you?’
‘Feel what?’ she said, so poleaxed by the notion that she even had to question her indifference to him after such certainty for so long that for a moment she genuinely didn’t know what he meant.
‘The chemistry.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she said, not altogether genuine now.
‘Yes, you do.’
‘I’m over you,’ she said to convince herself more than him.
‘Are you?’
‘Totally.’
‘Then why aren’t you moving?’
‘You’re in the way.’
He took a step back, but to her alarm it didn’t make any difference to her mobility. And he knew it. She could tell by the glint in his eye, and the panic escalated to such a level that she thought the top of her head was about to blow off.
What if she wasn’t as over him as she’d thought? What if, despite all this time, despite all the lengths she’d gone to to ensure otherwise, she wasn’t over him at all?
Because if she was, she wouldn’t have to spend every anniversary drunk out of her mind to avoid the memories, would she?
If she was, she wouldn’t have found it so hard to drink out of those glasses.
If she was, she wouldn’t be so afraid of mind-blowing sex, and she wouldn’t only enter relationships with men who left her body completely unstirred.
If she was she wouldn’t have felt so hurt at the thought Kit had just come here for sex.
‘Do you want to know what I think, Lily?’
‘No,’ she said, her voice as croaky as if she hadn’t used it for years.
‘I think you’re as over me as I am over you.’
She cleared her throat and tried to pull herself back on track. ‘You can think what you like.’
‘Can you honestly say you don’t want me?’
No. ‘Yes.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘Too bad.’
‘I want you.’
‘Well, we can’t always have what we want.’
‘Can’t we?’ he murmured.
She set her jaw because whatever he wanted, whatever she might or might not want—and who knew the answer to that?—them sleeping together would be a disaster of titanic proportions and she had no intention of giving in. ‘No.’
He moved closer, his gaze not letting her look away, and beneath its intensity she felt her resolve, her immunity to him begin to crumble. ‘Are you sure about that?’
Her heart thundered. ‘Quite sure.’ And then at the predatory gleam in his eye, she added, ‘What?’