“Are you meeting your clients at the store?” With quick movements, he gathered a pile of papers from one drawerand shoved them into another, tucking them beneath a stack of sweaters. “Or are you visiting their homes?”
Those papers looked familiar. But how in the world was that possible?
She kept considering the matter as she absently answered his question. “Their homes. The LMT replacing me needs my old space at the store.”
“How much do you know about these clients?” He was transporting a dark pile of…something…now. Underwear?
She squinted, but couldn’t quite tell. Dammit.
Back to that pile of papers. It had included lined paper, from what she’d seen, mixed with normal printer paper. All filled with writing. A few smaller rectangles, including one with a picture of a?—
Wait. She knew what those papers were. No wonder he’d wanted her to hang out in the living room while he dealt with the drawers.
“I’ve read their intake paperwork, and I’ve seen most of them for years.” She tilted her head, wondering at what those papers revealed about him. “If I didn’t trust them, I wouldn’t have agreed to go to their homes.”
“So you think it’s safe.”
Ah, the old Sebastián had returned, his expression and tone both determinedly neutral. But the past twenty-four hours had revealed more about him than he probably realized.
“Iknowit’s safe.”
He nodded. “Fair enough. You have good instincts.”
She let that firm statement warm her thoroughly before she spoke again. “Hey, Seb?”
“Yeah?” He looked up from a second nearly-empty drawer.
“Two quick questions.”
He straightened and turned toward her. “Shoot.”
“How’s your head doing?” Not that he’d tell her if he were in pain, but she needed to ask.
“Fine,” he said, to her total lack of surprise. “What’s your second question?”
She rested against the headboard and watched his face. “Why did you keep all the letters and postcards and e-mails I’ve sent you over the years?”
FOUR
Later that night,sleepless and unsettled on his lumpy-ass pullout couch, Sebastián considered the damning evidence Lucy had seen.
His request—no, hisplea—for her to stay with him had revealed more than enough. Too much. But he could dismiss that moment of weakness as the justifiable concern of a casual friend for her comfort and safety. The stash of letters, on the other hand…
Stupid turtle postcard, he thought.You gave me away, you green-finned motherfucker.
He’d never intended for Lucy to know how he’d printed all her e-mails in case he switched providers or accidentally erased his old messages or experienced some sort of worldwide computer outage. How he’d moved that stack of letters with him across the country. How he’d kept those postcards, those neatly penned lines, those smiley-face-laden e-mails hidden but close to him. Protected from view and harm both.
For all his attempts to downplay the significance of that stash, to brush it off as the instinct of a data-driven engineer,he’d spied new knowledge in her warm brown eyes. Speculation. Unwelcome questions about him and the intensity of his feelings for her.
For well over a decade, he’d managed to hide himself. She’d never comprehended that she was his greatest joy, as well as his greatest vulnerability.
And he didn’t reveal vulnerabilities to anyone.
Not even to Lucy. Not even during those few, breathless moments over the years when he’d have sworn she felt the same way about him. Not even when she smiled at him and he wanted to shout his love for her to the world.
He’d trained himself too well. Or maybe his years at Marysburg High had done the job for him. Either way, he’d learned his lesson.
Expose your heart, and someone would crush it underfoot.
