“Merry Christmas, Maddie.” He wore a white button-down with the sleeves rolled up and jeans.
“Merry Christmas, Leo.” She followed him inside. His house had the hushed quality that only homes containing sleeping children possess.
“Thanks for coming by,” he said. “I feel badly about interrupting your Christmas Day.”
“It’s no problem. Really.”
“I called because . . . Forgive me, may I take your coat?” He seemed a bit nervous and even more intense than usual.
Maddie’s concern that he might have invited her over to communicate bad news notched higher. Her pulse thrummed in her throat. “Sure.” She handed him her green coat, and he laid it carefully over a chair the way he’d seen her do it, with the brooch face up.
Maddie made her way into the living area. “Wow. Your house is great.” Floor-to-ceiling panes of glass left no room for artwork. None was needed. The nature surrounding the housewasthe art.
He’d furnished the interior with simple, masculine pieces and filled a wall of shelves with hardback books. Honey-hued planks of wood covered both the floor and the ceiling. She walked to the front of the space near Charlie’s Christmas tree, which looked even more adorably pitiful now that it had been laden with ornaments that clearly hadn’t been placed by a female. Far too many of them were grouped on the bottom right side.
Leo came to stand beside her. “You like the house?” He gave her an uneven smile.
“I absolutely do. It suits you.” The house was literary and straightforward and beautiful—just like he was. She trained her attention through the windows at the snow-dappled woods.
Everything in her was reaching out for him. For years she’d been stuffing down her attraction to Leo. The barriers she’d erected to hold it back were cracking now, splintering with the force of her feelings for him.
A pocket of silence opened between them. She had no words to fill it.
“I . . .” he said.
She turned to him. A ripple of power went through her as she took in the details of the spiky lashes surrounding his storm cloud–gray eyes, so somber at the moment. So earnest.
“I just wanted to say in person,” he continued, “how sorry I am about what happen yesterday with Deb.”
“I’m sorry too, for your sake. That moment was awkward.”
“Really awkward.”
“I felt like we’d been caught doing something wrong,” she said.
“Right, which is why I wanted to talk to you. I could tell that it upset you. I regret that it did.”
She slid her fingers into the front pockets of the black jeans she’d paired with a silvery top. “To be completely honest, there are some things about liking you, about dating you, that concern me because of my past with Olivia and your past with Olivia. I’ve liked you for quite a while, Leo.”
“I’ve liked you for quite a while, too.”
An eddy of happiness swept through her even though she was very aware that his “quite a while” equaled a matter of days. “I think it’s safe to say I’ve liked you longer. But I haven’t been sure if a relationship between us would be right.”
Fear shifted in the depths of his eyes.
“Deb’s reaction when she saw us together,” she said, “forced me to confront some things I’ve been avoiding.”
“And?”
“And I’ve done some soul-searching since yesterday. There might be other moments of awkwardness like the one with Deb in our future. And more guilt, too, most likely.” She didn’t want to sound as if she was assuming they had a long relationship ahead of them. They hadn’t been on a single date! On the other hand, it felt incredibly liberating to talk to him about this. “It’s not always easy to celebrate the good things that come your way when someone you loved no longer has the chance to do the same.”
“I know.”
She swallowed. “Just because it’s not easy, though, doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t still grab hold of the good things. I think that we should.”
Maddie watched relief steal over his features. Leo scrubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes then tunneled his fingers through his gold-toned hair before dropping his arms. “Thank God. You had me worried there for a second, Maddie. I wasafraid you were going to say that Deb’s reaction convinced you that going out with me wasn’t worth it.”
“No,” she said.
