Whether it was his crude words or tone, he didn’t know, but something made her temper flare. She straightened her back, lifted her chin, and met his gaze square on. “Actually, itisthat easy. Isn’t that what you’ve been telling me the whole time? If I love you nothing else matters, isn’t that what you said? I’m sorry my feelings weren’t clear enough to do the right thing at the precise moment you wanted me to. But this is new to me. I’ve never been in love before. You’ve had years knowing you loved me; I only realized how I felt last week. I was confused. I made a horrible mistake. I let you down. I didn’t jump when you asked, but I’m trying to jump now.” She took a deep breath. “Itissimple: either you love me and want a future with me or you don’t.”
His eyes met hers. “I don’t.”
His words landed with the sting of a slap. She flinched and sucked in her breath as if the pain was unexpected and sharp. Her hand fell from his arm.
One glance at her face was all he could bear. If he’d wanted to crush her—to hurt her as badly as she’d hurt him—he’d succeeded. She looked... heartbroken. Destroyed.Vulnerable.
He had to get the hell out of here before he did something stupid and pulled her into his arms and proved himself a liar. Showed her just how much her explanation and last-ditch ploy at seduction had come to breaking him. How much he wanted to forgive her. She’d made a mistake, but maybe under the circumstances it was understandable. She was caught up in the rush of the betrothal and trying to sort out her feelings—feelings that unlike his were new and uncertain.
He made it as far as the door. His hand squeezed the metal of the handle.Open it, he told himself.Walk away. He wanted to. Just like he wanted to stop loving her.
But wanting, he realized, wasn’t the same thing as actually doing. He could hide his feelings behind anger, but they were still there.
She was right: it was simple. He was furious with her, hurt beyond belief, and his pride was stinging, but the inescapable fact was that he loved her. He would always love her, whether she married someone else or she married him. He had two choices: he could be miserable and self-righteous or he could swallow his pride and maybe—just maybe—find the happiness of which he’d always dreamed.
It wasn’t a hard decision. He latched the door.
She couldn’t see what he’d done—or realized its import—but she’d recovered enough to call after him. “Go then. Walk away just like you did last time.”
He turned around, eyes narrowing. “What?”
She lifted her chin. He tried not to let his eyes drop below it, but it was damned difficult. In her anger she’d forgotten she was naked, and she stood there boldly and unself-consciously, and it was spectacular.
“I didn’t react the way you wanted me to on the rooftop three years ago, so you cut me off, refused to let me explain or work out my feelings, left for three years, and told yourself you hated me. And I didn’t react the way you wanted me to this time either, so you’ll hate me and try to cut me off again. But just like last time, I’ll be here waiting. Whether it takes you three years or twenty, I’ll be waiting for you to find a way in your stubborn, pigheaded, too-proud mind to forgive me.”
Thom frowned, realizing there was more truth in her accusation than he wanted to admit. But they were obviously going to have to work on her apologies.
She wasn’t done. “And eventually, you know what? Youwillforgive me, because that’s who you are. But by then, God knows, our children will have parents who are old enough to be grandparents.” Something in her voice broke and tears started pouring down her cheeks. “So go, but don’t blame me when I’m old and wrinkly and you can’t bear to bed me, because it will be all your fault!”
He cocked a brow, his eyes scanning over her smooth, creamy, and definitelynotwrinkled skin. His frown deepened as he looked her over again. “How many years do you think I have?”
She was so busy trying to wipe the tears away it took her a moment to realize what he said. She drew back with a start. “What?”
“Before I can’t bear to bed you?”
He wasn’t going to tell her he couldn’t think of anything more wonderful than growing old with her—and wrinkles sure as hell weren’t going to keep him out of her bed.
She blinked, tears clumping on her long lashes like diamonds sparkling in the sun. “That is what you respond to? I splay my heart open for you to see, beg for your forgiveness, humiliate myself with a failed seduction, and you want to know how many years you have before I get a few wrinkles?”
He shrugged. “It might take awhile for me to forgive you, but I can try to speed it up if it means I’m not in bed with a prune.”
Her gasp of outrage was followed by a widening of her eyes with understanding.
“And I wouldn’t necessarily say it was a failed seduction,” he added with a long, heated look down the length of her.
She trembled, and he felt himself thicken.
“You wouldn’t?”
He shook his head. “So how long?”
Her gaze met his and the hope he read in her eyes filled his chest with warmth. The ice around his heart that had been cracking since she arrived started to break away in thick sheets.
“I wouldn’t wait past tonight,” she said with a sad shake of her head. “I fear I’m getting older by the minute. The wrinkles are already starting.”
“Well, then I guess we better hurry.”
The tentative, carefully restrained hope in her eyes felled him. “Does that mean you forgive me?”
