“Do you have everything you need for the evening?” he asked.
A jerky nod was all she could manage in response.
He lifted his hand to her cheek and brushed the back of his fingers from her jawline to her neck. His mouth pulled flat.
“I wish things wouldn’t have ended so poorly between us, Mimi.”
Her heart, her damned heart, dusty from being ignored for so long, thudded with regret.
“So do I,” she admitted.
He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze, his eyes on hers, his head tilted at the right angle for a kiss. Not that she should be kissing Chase Ferguson, but if he leaned in...oh yes, she’d kiss him. She’d kiss the life out of him if for no other reason than to learn if her lips still fit against his like they were made to.
They did. She knew it.
Instead of bending for a kiss, he returned both hands to his pockets. The heat in his eyes banked.
“There was nothing I could do at the time except wish you well.”
The words stung like a rubber band snapped against her skin. They also snapped her back to reality. There was a warm fire and wine and casual, fun banter, but there was also ten years of loss and pain that separated them. A mountain that, while scalable, wasn’t worth risking her heart to climb.
“Nothing you could do?” She threw his words back at him, mentally lacing up her hiking boots to climb anyway. “You put me on a plane the same day you brought me to Dallas. You didn’t even offer me a place to sleep.”
“Why would I have offered to take you home with me?” His expression was genuinely sincere.
“Because—” I loved you “—it was the decent thing to do!”
His face remained blank, his voice calm while she’d entered the lower range of yelling. “It would’ve been decent to break up with you and then invite you back to my bed? You were upset. You needed to go home where you belonged. Holding you while you cried wouldn’t have eased the transition for either of us.”
She wanted to scream or slap him. Or both. Instead, she welded her back teeth together and forced a breath through her nose. This was an old argument. One that couldn’t be resolved then and sure as hell wouldn’t be resolved if they talked about it now.
She hadn’t seen Chase sending her away as decent. Especially after a flight where they’d made love in the private plane’s cabin and he’d told her he was glad she’d come with him to Dallas. At the time she’d believed what they had was real and lasting, and she thought he’d believed that, as well.
Until dinner with his parents ended after Eleanor had made her opinion abundantly clear. Chase had dumped Miriam right there in the driveway.
The memory stung like a cloud of angry wasps...