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Dear God, she should be dismissing his suggestion out of hand, but...
It felt as she had spent eleven months climbing in a very slow, very steep rollercoaster, her anticipation and fear increasing the higher the carriage climbed. Now she had reached the top and could see the fall coming, but was helpless to get off—helpless to find the reverse button that would take her back to safety. There was nothing to stop gravity taking its course and plunging her over the top.
Think of the exhilaration of the ride.
But think of the consequences should the carriage come off the track.
Absently she kneaded the back of her aching neck.
‘Thinking about what it would feel like to have me massage all that tension out of your system?’
Nico’s voice broke her out of her tortured reverie. Her eyes flew to him. He was carrying a pitcher of light green liquid and two glasses, evoking an enormous sense of déjà vu. Which was not surprising, seeing as he had performed the same action only twenty-four hours before.
Yet twenty-four hours ago she had hardly dared allow herself to think about sleeping with him, too fearful of the powerful feelings such a thought provoked. Now...? Now the burn inside her, the ache... Now she didn’t know if she even wanted to control it any more.
Nico was trying to create a proper marriage for them and she was letting fear block it. Surely it was time to step out of the shackles of the past and place her faith in a man she was already halfway to falling in love with?
Love?
She didn’t even know what it was. Not really.
Love was a word bandied about too much.
Her mother had professed to love her. And then she had abandoned her.
She had taken her foster mother into her heart only to be rejected.
Stephen had professed to love her, but he wouldn’t even let her breathe. With Stephen she had always kept the essence of herself hidden, rigidly maintaining her barriers. He’d never even come close to breaking through.
With Nico those same barriers were crumbling. The foundations were shaking. Everything was conspiring to pull the last of her fortress down—the sun, the setting and most especially Nico. Everything about him awoke senses she hadn’t been aware existed. He made her feel.
She straightened her spine and looked him square in the eyes. ‘Yes. I have been thinking about that.’
He merely raised an eyebrow. ‘And?’
Sometimes he was just too cool for school.
She picked up her glass and took a sip, then used her middle finger to slowly wipe the residue away from her mouth. ‘And the answer is yes.’
His eyes gleamed with a vibrancy that made the breath catch in her throat. He held his glass aloft. ‘To us.’
She chinked her glass to his. ‘To us,’ she echoed, striving vainly to match his collectedness.
A long, charged pause settled between them before he said, ‘To make it more of a competition, I will remove three of my pawns for each of the games.’
‘You’re not worried I might pick it up as well as I picked up Scrabble?’ she could not resist asking, her voice huskier than usual.
He shook his head. ‘Chess is a game of strategy. It takes years of practice to become proficient at it. My father taught me to play when I was a young boy so I have decades on you.’
‘How young?’
‘Five.
‘Crikey. That is young.’ Automatically her thoughts flew to her own childhood, to being five years old. That was the most vivid age in her early memories. How could it not be? It was the age she been ripped away from everything and everyone she loved.
She pushed the maudlin thoughts away. She was twenty-seven years old and had spent her entire life trying to be a good girl, trying to do the right thing. She had convinced herself that if she behaved one day her mother would come back and get her.
Her mother had never come back. She hadn’t wanted her. And when, at the age of eight, she had finally been approved as a candidate for adoption: no one else had wanted her either.
She had spent the rest of her life pushing everyone away because of it.
She wanted Nico with a desperate, hungry craving she could no longer control. And he wanted her too.
He was right. They could be good together. But they would never know unless she took a chance.
Was she really prepared to risk what could be a happy future for them because of fear?
No. Not any more.
Today would be the next turning point in her life.
Today the barriers would come down.
She was in charge of her own destiny. That destiny was with Nico. She just had to trust...
Filling her lungs to stave off the nervous butterflies playing inside her chest, she placed her fingers at the hem of her T-shirt and slowly pulled it up, past her belly, past her bikini-covered breasts, and over her head.
