They carried a great deal of weight considering their diminutive size individually.
“Joyce likes you,” Jordan stated quietly.
“Does she?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound casual.
Jordan’s arm was beneath me, his hand curved over my shoulder. He swept his palm up and down my upper arm in a slow motion. “Yes. In fact, she told me that I was disowned if I screwed up with you.”
I twisted to look at his face. “Really?”
He grinned at me. “You don’t have to look so pleased about it.”
Smiling back, I retorted, “Maybe she’ll adopt me.”
“Only if you marry me,” he replied.
My body stilled at his words. I think my heart even stopped beating for a split second. “Marry you?”
His grin morphed into a bold laugh. A laugh he rarely shared. “Now you look terrified. It wasn’t a proposal, merely a statement.”
I hated the fact that he could read me so well when others couldn’t. My poker face took a permanent vacation around Jordan. My sister would be incredibly pleased.
I turned my head back and laid it on his shoulder once again. “That wasn’t terror. More like shock. I thought you wanted to be George Clooney and remain a bachelor forever.”
“Ah, but George Clooney got married,” he pointed out, immediately pouncing on the flaw in my statement.
“Yes, after he turned fifty,” I shot back.
Jordan’s arm tightened around me as he continued to laugh. As strange as this conversation was, I enjoyed hearing his uninhibited laughter.
“Don’t worry, Tanya. I won’t wait fifteen years to ask you to marry me.”
“We’ve barely been dating three weeks, so I think it might be a bit early to talk marriage,” I stated, hoping that it would stop further discussion on the topic. “Maybe we should shelve it for a few months.”
Jordan merely laughed harder before he replied, “But if you count the six months we dated before I left for New York, now is about the time couples begin talking about the future. Especially when they’re our age.”
Unable to remain still, I sat up and twisted to face him, clutching the sheet to my chest. “We didn’t date before. We were having a casual fling.”
Jordan’s grin didn’t fade. In fact, his expression grew absolutely wicked. “As I recall we did have a lot of sex, but I also took you to dinner and the movies a few times. I think that qualifies as dating.”
As an attorney, I should have had a ready argument, but I didn’t. Mostly because I didn’t want to argue. I was too busy trying to breathe. Jordan had never seen our relationship as casual, even two years ago.
Yet he still left me.
“Tanya?”
I realized I was staring at him without seeing him and refocused on the moment.
“What just happened?” he asked.
“You didn’t consider what we had casual? Ever?”
Shrugging one shoulder, he answered, “Maybe the first month or so, then I realized I liked spending time with you and you seemed to feel the same.”
“But you left for New York anyway,” I muttered. “So our relationship or whatever you want to call it couldn’t have been that important to you.”
How could it feel as though my heart was breaking all over again when he was lying beside me in my bed?
Jordan’s smile faded completely and he sat up, leaning back against the headboard. “It was, Tanya. But it didn’t seem as important to you.”
