“If I have to.”
He waited. “Now?”
“Be patient. It’s very confusing. I’ve never had feelings like this before and they are a little overwhelming.”
His frown smoothed away and a smile curved his lips. A distinctly relieved smile, with a little smugness thrown in. “Take your time.”
“You haven’t told me that you love me since we freed the female gargoyles. Combine that with you saying you’re going home, and I figured it meant you’d gotten tired and given up on me, or maybe realized I wasn’t worth the hassle, or that you’d been mistaken about loving me.”
His fingers tightened and he looked consternated. “I thought if I kept telling you, you’d feel like I was pressuring you. I do love you. That’s not ever going to change.” He paused. “It bothered you I might not love you?”
I made a face. “Seems like.”
“So that means you have feelings for me, too?”
“I’ve always had feelings for you.”
“I was hoping for something better than hate, distrust, dislike, fury, disgust, resentment, annoyance….I could go on.”
I choked out a laugh. “You forgot panty-melting attraction.”
“I wasn’t aware that your panties had been melting,” he said, brows arching. “Tell me more.”
“Don’t you have a plane to catch? Fires to put out?”
“They’ll wait.”
“You didn’t seem to think so back at the café.”
“I was an ignorant idiot at the café. I got over it. Talk to me.”
I heave a sigh. “Fine. I have feelings for you. Good feelings,” I added. “I’m just not entirely sure what they are. I have zero experience in this arena.”
He smoothed a hand over my hair. It felt so good I’d have purred if I could.
“That’s really,reallygood to hear. When I comehome, maybe we can talk about it some more. Help you figure it out.”
Or maybe move to the showing part. I’d been holding back because neither one of us were the sort to have casual sex, and I didn’t want to hurt Damon by pretending to feel more than I did. Except now I knew I wouldn’t be pretending. In fact, I was beginning to think I’d actually fallen in love with him. Or if not, I was on my way.
We should definitely move on to the showing part. I could practically hear Stacey, Lorraine, and Jen squealing and throwing confetti. They thought I should have been riding him like a stallion practically since they’d first seen him.
Nervousness, anticipation, and joy bubbled through me. My smile grew wide enough to cramp my cheeks.
“Sure,” I said. “We’ll…talk. I can’t wait.”
ChapterTwo
After saying goodbye to Damon—whichinvolved more mind-blowing kissing and maybe a little under the clothes petting and possibly a hickey or two, not to mention moaning and way too much unresolved aching—I managed to drive myself to my store/home.
Formerly my granary and feed store, I’d turned it into a showroom for pieces that were too good to put estate sale prices on. Besides the showroom, it contained a warehouse, my office, and a garage for my car and the box truck. My apartment took up half of the top floor, and I’d never gotten around to doing anything with the other half.
After Garrett had vandalized the place in a fit of rage, it had needed a lot of rebuilding. Amazing what a pissed off witch can do. Every single window required replacement, all the electric lines, the floors, the sheetrock and a lot of the studs…. Basically a total gut job.
With all the construction going on, I’d put the rest of my employees to work expanding the estate sale side of things, so that we could do multiple sales on any given weekend. I’d been wanting to anyway, and business was booming. I’d rented warehouse space for the pieces that I ordinarily would have put in the showroom, and I’d been shopping them around to my contacts all over the world. I’d also had my website updated with current inventory.
I checked in with Kevin and spent a couple hours touring the site, talking to the contractor, and going over orders for fixtures, lights, floors, tile, cabinets, knobs, and a million other things. I was getting ready to break for lunch when a gold Porsche convertible drove into the parking lot. The top was down, but not one strand of the driver’s hair was out of place. Magic, I supposed, watching her park sideways of the lines and taking up three spots. If my mother was trying to make a good impression, she was off to a bad start.
She waved vigorously at me, the faceted stones in her chunky gold bracelet flashing in the sunlight. She wore big sunglasses, a green designer dress that screamed wealth and elegance, and high heels with what I assumed were real emeralds scattered carelessly across the leather.
