Michigan Avenue was busy with foot traffic and Christmas music spilled out of the doors of shops as they opened. He kept Paisley close to his side as they moved through the crowds until they got to the window he’d noticed previously. Then he pulled her to a stop in front of it.
“This one,” he said, stepping behind her and putting his arms around her. He heard her breath catch and she turned her head to the side and up, to look back at him.
“How’d you know I love this scene?”
“You have a print of it,” he said.
“It’s tiny...like postcard-size! I didn’t think you’d notice.”
“I noticed.”
She turned away from the window, winding her arms around his waist. “What else did you notice?”
“That you always open the blind as soon as you wake up and stand and look at the sky. And that you wake up early but don’t want to talk for twenty minutes,” he said. He’d learned that thehardway.
She laughed. “True. I noticed that you wake up early and exercise. Always fifty push-ups and then one hundred crunches.”
He arched one eyebrow at her. “Well, if I don’t start moving then I start thinking and... I don’t always like where my mind goes.”
Especially when he’d been deceiving her. It was hard to stay positive when he knew that he wasn’t being honest, so he had to move to keep himself in the right headspace. But he didn’t want to tell her that.
“I journal when I get like that. I guess pretending to be someone else was stressful,” she said.
He put his arm around her and turned her away from the window to start them walking again. “It isn’t being someone else, it was not telling you that was adding to my stress levels.”
She tipped her head to the side. “I think we all have stressors. My dad couldn’t help himself when he saw someone who trusted too easily... He had to see how far he could take it.”
“What about you?” He noticed that she tended to bring her dad into the conversation when she didn’t want to share too much.
“I make lists. Like right now, I’m making one with pros and cons.”
“You are?” He lifted an eyebrow. “What are you trying not to stress over?”
“Inviting you back into my apartment. That kiss earlier was pretty good,” she said.
“Again, the faint praise.”
“I thought we agreed you didn’t need your ego stroked,” she teased.
“Did we? I’d never turn down being stroked by you.”
She ran her finger down the side of his jaw. “You wouldn’t? So that was real?”
“Everything between you and I was real, Pais,” he admitted gruffly.
They reached the end of the main shopping area on Michigan Avenue and she slanted a glance his way. “Was it? I feel like pretending I don’t want you back in my bed is a kind of lie I’m telling myself for the sake of my pride.”
Pride.Until she mentioned it, he’d been happily ignoring the fact that he might be here simply for his pride. That the reason he couldn’t just let her walk away was that every woman wanted him. Well, not every woman...but quite a damn few, and there was something about Paisley maybe not wanting him just because he was Sean O’Neill.
He was distracting himself—anything to keep from breaking down and begging her to take him back. Not that he’d beg...but he wanted her back in his bed because she was a hot, sensual woman. There was something inside of him that was convinced that if he got her back there, he’d be able to convince her that she belonged with him.
“You’re being surprisingly quiet,” she said. “Do you not want me?”
“I want you too damn much, lady. But this has to be your decision.”
“I think I’d rather it was ours.”
Ours.