“Like I said, it’s complicated.”
“I’m here for less than six months, then I’m gone. Back to Florida.” Or else. “What could be less complicated than that?”
His fingers twitch, then loosen. Reaching out, he traces a long index finger along a vein on the gilt table between us. The action seems sensual, almost erotic. Or maybe that’s just how he makes me feel. It’s certainly mesmerizing because when I try to move my gaze, I find I can’t.
His hand drops, and he offers nothing else. Embarrassment washes over me as my heart sinks.
“You could just say if you don’t want me.” I avert my gaze as tears suddenly prick at my lids. I won’t cry over this.
“You know that’s not it,” he admits unhappily.
“Then I don’t know what else to say, and I’m tired of dancing around this. Either explain it to me or…” I almost say something likeI’ll sleep with your brother,but it seems my femme fatale has already left the building.
“I made Connor a promise,” he says quietly, without meeting my gaze. “I swore I’d look after you if anything ever happened to him, and I hadn’t even done that. I didn’t even know how old you were until lunch with Polly that day. In my head, you were still a kid.”
“Well, you did live pretty far away.”
“That’s not a good enough excuse.”
“You did what you could.” My denials fall quickly. “If you knew what his other friends—”
His gaze slices up. “I doubt your brother tasked his friends with the same thing. I didn’t do enough. Then you turned up in my apartment, and I did too much.”
“Don’t take that back. Don’t you dare take that back,” I retort as a fist tightens around my heart. “That was the most real moment of my life. The most sensual.
“It doesn’t make it right, Mimi,” he says wearily.
“I’m just going to point out the obvious,” I say, my voice hardening, “but you do realize Connor isn’t here.”
“Surely, that’s all the more reason to remember what he asked of me.” Yet from under his lashes, he stares at me with such intensity. Such longing.
“To look after me? I’m a grown woman. I don’t need looking after.” Lord knows I’ve had enough mollycoddling in my lifetime. “And if Connor was here, do you think he would have a say in my life? My decisions?”
“Neither of us can know that, but you’d have your brother to guide you if nothing else.”
“I don’t need help in knowing my own mind. And you know what? I think if Connor was here, he’d want me to be happy.”
“Connor would want you anywhere but with me, Mimi. He wanted you to be with a good man.”
“And you’re not?” I demand, folding my arms across my chest. “Turning up here with your sister, caring enough about me to stage an intervention makes you the villain?” Jerking out my hand, I flick my fingers angrily in the air. “Well, does it?”
“El isn’t the kind of man you should be with, either.”
I jerk forward like a striking snake. “I get to decide who I’ll screw.” His eyes widen, turn molten, and harden at my coarse language, but I carry on, pointing a finger across the table at him. “Me. Not you, and not my dead brother. Enough with your bull. You tell yourself you’re here for Connor, but you’re not. Tell the truth, Whit. This is more a case of, if you can’t have me, El sure as hell can’t.”
“And we come back to the point that it isn’t El you want.”
“So?” I flick my shoulder. “El asked me out. It was either that or another night in with the cat,” I admit spikily.
“You’re sure it has nothing to do with yesterday.”
“I don’t take your meaning.”
“Payback, maybe.” He glances down at his hands as though he could find the answer there.
“You left because your sister needed you.”
“It didn’t make you angry?” He seems to study my face for the truth, but what kind of person would that make me? “Angry that I didn’t at least call.”
