But she didn’t have the courage to do it. Couldn’t bring herself to raise her arms to wrap them around him, couldn’t force the words to come out of her mouth. He had always been a safe place for her. Someone she could go to no matter what. She could count on him to hold her and not let go until she was ready. She didn’t even have to ask most of the time. He justknew. But now, she didn’t want him to do it because she had to ask for it. Tears stung her nose and she blinked rapidly to dispel them from her eyes before he could see them.
The realization hit her like a blow to the chest. He hadn’t wantedher. He’d done it out of pity, because she’d asked. No, she hadbegged; and he had done exactly what she asked for, because he was Beau and he couldn’t tell her no.
“Thanks for the fake date,” she whispered as bravely as she could, trying to force a little levity into her tone and doing her best to lift her lips into a smile. She felt her lips wobbling from unshed tears almost immediately. Stepping around him, she headed toward the coffee machine just to give her hands something to do, something for her to look at other than the man that had in just two days destroyed what was left of her heart. “I’ll uh… I’ll see you, Beau.”
Stupid, stupid woman.
“Right,” she heard him say, and out of the corner of her eye watched as he picked up his things, cradling them in one arm. “See you, Val.”
Val remained stock still until she heard the click of her door close as he let himself out before she let the first tears fall.
CHAPTER 17
Beau forced his feet to move away from her door, even as the sound of her crying tore him to shreds. Every last little bit of him lay shattered at his feet.
Guilt so strong it made his stomach revolt ate at him mercilessly. This dead weight in his chest—which he assumed was his traitorous heart that after nearly forty years had finally decided to start working—made it feel like he was dying. Maybe he was.
This is why he didn’t do feelings. Fucking hell.
He let himself into his apartment and set his things down on the counter. It was so similar to Val’s apartment, but she’d made hers feel homey, where his still felt stark… and dammit was she right but it feltlonely.
He rubbed at his chest in an effort to dispel the torturous ache that had taken up residence beneath his breastbone. Was this a heart attack? Nothing should feel like this.
But no, he wasn’t in cardiac arrest nor was he suffering from heartburn.
He had spent two days in bed with Val. Two days and two nights of non-stop orgasmic, marathon sex. The kind he’d neverexperienced… and he had experienceda lotof sex in his bachelor driven life.
Two days was all it took for him to fall absolutely, irrevocably, truly and madly in love with Valentina Compton.
What the actual fuck.
When the realization had hit him in the shower, when the truth of the depth of his feelings for Val surfaced and threatened to choke him, the overwhelming guilt that had assailed him had nearly brought him to his knees.
As a kid, he’d spent a lot of time with his dad and Hank. The two were best friends, you never found one without the other, and then he joined as the oldest son between the two friends. Hank and Rachel had not had any sons, so as he’d grown, he’d become a sort of adopted son to Hank. Whether his dad and Hank were out having a garage beer, playing horseshoes in the backyard, going ice-fishing, he was always added to the mix.
He had felt Hank’s death as acutely as his father did. They’d both lost a best friend, and he had lost a secondary father/uncle figure.
When Hank knew his time was coming, he’d pulled Beau aside and asked him to watch over his girls, all four of them. He had promised he would, even as the reality had set in that this great man would soon be gone. And he had followed through on that promise. He always would.
Would Hank feel betrayed by him, if he knew what had happened between himself and Val this weekend? Beau couldn’t imagine that fucking his eldest daughter into oblivion was what Hank had in mind when he asked him to take care of his girls.
But fuck… the way she’d looked in that dress. The way she’d looked steppingoutof that dress… He would never get that out of his head. The way her body was so receptive and how responsive she was to his touch; it was like she had been made for him. This was why nothing else had felt right. Why nothing else had ever made him want to settle down. They fit together. Hadn’t they always?
Is that why Hank had asked Beau to watch over them? Because he knew, somehow, that this is exactly where he and Val would end up? Hadn’t Rachel been hinting at it for years and he just brushed it off as a mother’s worry for her daughter and an extension of worry to him as a sort of extra son she’d never had with Hank?
No, there’s no way that this is what they’d meant.Hey, Hank, hope you don’t mind I’ve fucked your daughter against every surface in her apartment, wrapped my fingers around her throat, and made her come with the explosiveness of a freight train… We’re good, right? No hard feelings?
A strangled sort of sound escaped from his throat, and he leaned his hands against the counter, hanging his head between them until his chin nearly touched his chest.
And when the guilt gave way to paralyzing fear, he’d done what he did best. Shut down. Became a dick. Left her with questions in her eyes and dammit if he hadn’t wanted to wrap her in his arms and not fucking let go. He’d prayed with every fiber of his being for her to not ask, because if she had, he wouldn’t have had the strength to leave.
She deserves better, he thought miserably, staring at the wood floor between his slipper clad feet.Better than a quick two-day sex fest and an emotionally stunted nearly forty-year-old man. She deserves the men in her books… Her own personal Prince Charming.
And Beau would never be that man.
CHAPTER 18
“Why do you look like someone just ran over your puppy?”
