That fucking ring.
“You must think I’m mad,” she said after she took a slug of her tea.
She kept the mug in her hands, her legs curled up beneath her in the chair, and it turned out the Australian sun loved her as much as the English rain always had. It brought out the hints of gold in her hair, the prettiest brown he’d ever seen. It was longer now, and she’d piled it up on top of her head in a manner he knew most women spent hours to achieve. But not Jenny. Everything about her was elegant and effortless, from that delicate collarbone he could see beneath the collar of her shirt, to those cheekbones that seemed to make her dark eyes brighter.
And that mouth that had made him hungry as long as he’d known her.
“I do think you’re mad,” he agreed, lazily. “But then, I always have. So you turning up at my door on a random Saturday doesn’t change a thing.” She was flushed, he noticed, and it almost seemed as if she was having trouble meeting his eyes. “Are you embarrassed about something?”
“It’s a bit cold, don’t you think?” she asked, after a moment. And then, to his astonishment, fluttered her hand in his direction, as if to encompass his whole body. “Shouldn’t you...put that away?”
If it was any other woman, he would have taken great pleasure in the notion that his nakedness made her...flutter.
But Dylan had the distinction of being Jenny’s friend. Her best friend, she often said, an honor he shared with only one other person on this earth. And he’d always liked crazy, reckless Erika Vanderburg well enough, but he knew full well there was no possible way she loved Jenny as much as he did. Because nobody could.
And the consistent theme in their friendship was that Jenny resolutely refused to see him as a man. He was going to remember the fluttering. And that flush.
“I’m not cold,” he told her.
Which was true enough. The slap of the breeze was a good thing. It helped remind him that this wasn’t one of those fantasies he’d had so many times. That whatever reason Jenny had for being here, it was not to fling off her clothes and climb on top of him at last.
His body needed to calm the fuck down.
“This really is a lovely house,” she was saying, like she was at a tea party. “The pictures you sent years back really didn’t do it justice. I love how it sort of flows, doesn’t it, from room to room, and then of course the view must really—”
“Fucking hell, Jenny.”
She blew out a breath. “I needed to get away. I need to...think about some things.”
He nodded toward the gigantic rock weighing down her left hand. The symbol of what he’d known would come, sooner or later. Jenny was always going to get married, and he’d accepted that, too, hadn’t he? He’d always been a realist.
But accepting it in the abstract was a lot easier than the ring in his face. And her here.
“Marriage is a big step,” was all he said.
“Yes,” she agreed, too quickly. “But Conrad is a good choice. Really. Some of the men my father sent me out on dates with were awful.”
“Do you love him?”
He shouldn’t have asked that. Because he really didn’t want to know the answer.
And he didn’t need to see her look of astonishment. “Love him? Oh, no.” She shook her head. “Certainly not.” She considered her tea for a moment, then brightened. “But maybe someday I will. They say that arranged marriages—”
“Stability isn’t the same thing as love,” Dylan interrupted her. He should know. It was a challenge to remain relaxed in his chair, but he did it. “And I think you’ll find that friendship, however intense, is no substitute for passion.”
Interestingly, that flush seemed to deepen. She busied herself with her mug of tea, once again seeming...flustered.
“You would be the expert on that,” she said softly.
But distinctly.
Dylan hadn’t touched his tea. He thought longingly of the bottle of whiskey he had inside, aged to perfection, but he knew nothing took the edge off the Jenny effect. Nothing ever had, nothing ever would.
“You know me.” He forced the easy grin that would make most of the people who knew him do a double take. Because Dylan Kilburn was edgy, not easy. But Jenny didn’t know that Dylan. “As long as they leave happy.”
“She seemed very happy.” Jenny nodded in the vague direction of the street. “The one downstairs.”
“Mission accomplished, then.”