“And sometimes, I suppose, you feel that Fate can turn on one kiss alone?” A sardonic humor tinged her tone.
“Aye.” He tossed back the rest of his port and shot her a wry smile. “As an acclaimed, dashing young writer once said, sometimes it very well can.”
She sent him a faint smile and then looked away, staring into the low fire burning in the hearth. Rain continued to drum against the window.
He continued, “I’m afraid, as a friend, ye will simply have tae accept me in my complexity.”
“I’m still on the fence regarding our friendship, Ethan,” she said primly. “Do not take more rope than I have permitted.”
“I think we are more alike than ye care tae admit, lass,” he replied, voice soft. “As ye said earlier, both of us know what it is like tae be viewed as trophies. I want to be the man ye let inside the armor ye don to fend off the world. Just as I wish tae let yourself inside my own armor. To be atruefriend, not merely a sometime kissing partner or a companion of convenience.”
Allie had gone preternaturally still opposite him. “And what if I don’t wish for that?”
“Well, that is for yourself tae determine. But I have faith I can win ye over.” Ethan rapped his knuckles on the table. “And then, after we have becometruefriends, should ye ever decide ye want more than friendship . . . if ever ye look at me without calculations going on in that lovely head of yours, if ye can meet my yearning gaze without glancing away . . . then and only then, will I kiss ye. But be warned, lass, if I kiss ye at that moment, I’ll be kissing ye for keeps.”
13
Allie had a rather restless night’s sleep.
She attributed it to Aunt Whipple’s snores echoing from the adjoining room.
But she knew that for the lie it was.
Ethan’s words would not let her be.
I want to be the man ye let inside the armor ye don to fend off the world.
Goose-flesh pebbled her skin at the memory of his green eyes, sincere and brimming with intensity.
His words were a challenge.
A call to change. To trust.
Yet . . . her armor, as Ethan termed it, was born of betrayal and self-preservation.
In the past, every person she welcomed inside her walls turned traitor.
Tristan, as her twin brother.
Fabrizio, as a companion in her quest for purpose and survival.
She needn’t look far to see howthoserelationships had come out.
So . . . why would she let Ethan in?
He offered her nothing but his friendship in return. And she had never had a friend . . . just to have a friend.
When a lady kisses me, I want it to mean something. Because when I kiss a lady, itwillmean something.
She shivered. If she had been ambivalent about Ethan’s kiss before—which, for the record, she hadnot—those two sentences would have changed her mind in an instant.
Their previous kisses had, in a sense, been hers. She had initiated them, demanded them.
But . . . how different would the kiss be ifhewere claiming it ofher?
Madonna.
The very thought rendered her lightheaded with want.
