She has a brief fantasy of him picking them out, thinking about her as he did so. They’re purple: her favourite colour.
‘I’m sure you bought them with me in mind.’
Lexi should know by now that Americans don’t always understand the nuances of British humour– that when bantering Brits start a sentence withI’m surethere’s a strong chance the rest of the sentence will be preposterous. But old habits and ways of speaking die hard, and sometimes don’t die at all.
‘I did, actually.’
He says it with a straight face. There’s no reason to doubt him. And now that she thinks about it, they did have the feel of newness about them last night. He really went and bought new sheets for their first night together? That’s almost unbearably romantic.
‘I’m so glad I was right about you,’ she says.
‘That sounds ominous. Right in what way?’
‘I knew that under that gruff façade was a Mr Darcy, just dying to get out. There was a good heart hidden under...’ She almost says,under that arrogant exterior, but she catches herself.
‘Under...?’
‘Well, you know. Under all thenot-handsome-enough-to-tempt-mestuff. It was nothing a piano recital and a walk in the park couldn’t fix.’
Sam shuffles onto his side and props his chin against his fist, like he’s expecting Lexi to say a whole lot more. ‘You... tried to fix me?’ he prompts.
‘I tried to see if Jane Austen’s tricks would work.’
Sam is frowning. Lexi doesn’t love the turn this conversation is taking. She hasn’t even told him about therealreason she used those tricks at first, but she’s already said too much.
‘So I was a project to you? Some kind of game?’
His frown deepens. Nobody in their early thirties should have frown lines this deep.
‘Unbelievable.’ Sam sounds disgusted.
Lexi feels her heart start to pound. She’s made a terrible mistake. She’s messed this up.
‘But it didn’t matter in the end! I didn’t need the project. Because you’re a great guy, and I saw that pretty quickly. Jane Austen taught me to look beneath the surface, that’s all. And when I did, I liked what I saw.’
Talking doesn’t seem to be getting her anywhere, so she stops. She waits for what seem like interminable minutes for Sam to fill the silence.
‘I really fell for you, Lexi. I let my guard down and I fell for you. And now to find out I was just some project to you—’
‘That’s not—’
‘I was a project to Amanda, too. My parents, as well. I’ve been someone’s project all my life, it feels like. People trying to fit me into what they’ve decided I should be. I’m not doing that anymore.’
More silence. It’s hard to know how to respond. It might help for Lexi to say how much she likes him, that she even thinks she might love him. But it’s terrifying to lay that down and know he could still kick her out. Those aren’t cheap, easy words to throw around. She won’t say them until she knows he’ll say them back, and that doesn’t seem likely right now.
‘I think you should go,’ he says, quietly.
She lets a beat pass, lets him hear himself so that he can take it back. But he doesn’t.
‘Really?’ she asks, her voice breaking.
He nods. This is where a Brit would say, ‘I’m sorry,’ even if they didn’t mean it, just to defuse the tension. But that’s not the American way, and it certainly isn’t Sam’s.
‘But I—’
‘Please,’ he says. ‘Just go.’
Lexi doesn’t want to leave this comfortable, purple-sheeted bed. She doesn’t want to leave this beautiful man. And yet here he is, watching her as she pulls the sheets back and gets up, naked, exposed and vulnerable, retrieving bits of clothing from the floor, and gradually dressing. She gives him a long, hard stare before she opens the door, ayou’re hurting mestare, athis is a wastestare, ayou’re being an idiotstare.
