Boom! Like an atomic blast it had struck her. She loved him. Not a crush. Not simple lust. Not even puppy love. But love.
She’d never been more terrified in her life.
“What is it?” Mark asked, cocking his head until the moonlight glinted off his curly locks and into his chocolaty eyes. He claimed to need a haircut, but she loved how long his hair was. Loved him.
Oh la vache!
With her heart in her throat, she asked him, “Where do you see this going?”
“This?” He delicately sketched the outline of her nipple, smiling when her areola pinched. “I see it going two or three more rounds before the night is over.”
“No. This.” She waved a hand between them. “Us. Where do you see us going?”
When he arched a brow, she pressed on. “What am I to you, Mark? What is this thing between us? Am I just a distraction while you’re here in Paris? Is this relationship just a way to pass the time until you go back to Israel?”
“Sonya—”
“I need the truth.” Her voice sounded awful. So unsure and frightened and yuck! But she couldn’t help it! “I need you to tell me because I think I might be falling in love with you.”
She didn’t have the guts to confess it was already a done deal. When he got still, when he searched her eyes while carefully schooling his features, she thought she might up and die.
“Scheisse!” She cursed and covered her face with her hands, pressing the heels of her palms against her eyes, trying to push back the hot tears that pricked behind them. “I shouldn’t have said that. I’m sorry I—”
“Sonya…” He gently lowered her hands, holding them prisoner in his much larger one. “I’m in love with you too.”
She hiccupped on a startled cry. “You are?”
“Of course. And you aren’t falling in love with me. You’re in love with me.”
She laughed, fighting tears. “How do you know?”
“Because I see it in your eyes. Everything you’re thinking, everything you’re feeling shines in them.” He smiled at her. “You’d make a terrible spy.”
Then he kissed her. Kissed her with so much love and passion and…love that her tender, young heart felt like it would burst.
“How will we ever make this work?” Trepidation and wariness and passion had lowered the timbre of her voice. “You work for the Mossad. You wage shadow wars against states that sponsor terror. How can you do that and still hope to build a life with me?”
Mark swallowed, a dark cloud passing over his handsome features. “Are you asking me to choose between you and my country? You and my duty?”
“No.” She was quick to answer even though her heart cried yes! “The work you do is too important.” She shook her head, overwhelmed by uncertainty, swamped by a million questions that had no easy answers.
“The work we do is too important,” he insisted.
“Right.”
He lay back beside her and tucked her against him until her head was pillowed on his chest. She could hear the solid thud of his heart.
“What do you believe in?” he asked after a while.
“What do you mean? Like, in terms of God?”
“No.” She felt him shake his head. “In terms of duty and sacrifice and living not for yourself but for the greater good.”
“Oh, those little things?” She expected a laugh. She didn’t get one.
“I’m serious. What do you believe?”
She took a deep breath. “I guess I believe the things that people say are fleeting, but the things they do? Well, those things last forever. I believe in duty and sacrifice and living a life of service to others, like you said. But I suppose I also believe that love conquers all. So maybe…maybe we can have it all. Do you think?”
