Hurt seemed a tame word for what he would feel if she answered the same way she had last time.
Thank you!And in such sisterly tones, she might as well have kneed him in the balls.
Made him pause outside her door, fist raised.
He had to do this. Watching her with her family, listening to her mother… No wonder Tessa didn’t know what to do with love. She’d never had it from those who should have offered it most freely. And if he withheld it from her because he was embarrassed, scared, he was no bloody better than they were.
And he wasn’t better than anyone most of the time.
But he was better than that.
He let his fist fall on the door once, a timid knock. Then with courage, louder, two more times.
The door cracked open, revealing a pale, inquisitive face, and he pushed through, shut it quickly behind him, holding a finger to his lips.
“Shh.”
Her smile flickered like a dying candle.
“Tessa,” he whispered, nudging her chin up with his knuckles for a better look. “Have you been crying?”
She sniffed and pressed the heel of her hand into her eyes. “Not at all.”
“Damn them. I shouldn’t have let Kit keep me from you. I should have followed sooner.”
“No. No. I needed to… to breathe.”
“Should I leave?” The easy way out.
“No.” That exit gone, then. Good. He couldn’t be a coward. He walked deeper into the room, scrubbing his hand through his hair. “Tessa…”
“We don’t have to talk.” Her hand landed soft as a butterfly between his shoulder blades.
He turned and caught her hand, placed it on his chest, just over his heart as he inhaled a shuddering breath. “I love you.”
Bloody hell. He’d not meant to say it like that.
Now she was looking at him as if he’d grown a tail or lost his higher-level cognition, and that last was distinctly possible.
“I love you like Romeo loves Juliet. No. Horrible example. They both die. And they’re so foolishly young and—” He cursed. “I’m bollocks-ing it up again.”
“Bollocks…ingwhatup?”
He sat her on the edge of the bed. “Stay there. Don’t talk.” She did. And she didn’t.
And he took up center stage before her,scrubbing his hands down his face then letting his arms hang dead at his sides. “I aminlove with you, Tessa King. I desire you as a man desires a woman. And I… cherish you as a husband does a wife. It has been years since I last saw you as a sister, a friend only. For ages, you’ve been, to me, the one rare jewel I can never have, no matter how hard I work, the star I can never reach, no matter how far I climb. You’ve been a dream that dissolves upon waking and— Damn. I’m no Shakespeare, but even I know that’s too many metaphors to say what plain words might say best.”
He hit his knees before her and took her hands in his. The lines of her palm were delicate spiderwebs, and the pulse that thrummed at her wrist seemed faintingly fast. He swept his thumb across it, trying to soothe it and found the courage to look up at her.
“I love you. I have been too scared to say it. I have been running from it because you have never felt for me what I do for you. And I tried to forget you. The theatre, the actresses, everything one long attempt to forget. I have longed for an amnesiac’s comfort. But after this afternoon, I want you to know that you are loved for who you are and nothing else. You do not have to be good or happy to earn my love. You will simply always have it.”
A tear rolled down her cheek.
He wiped it away.
She kissed him, wrapped both hands around his head and held him fast, stole his breath, and forced his heart into a joyous rhythm. He deepened it, pulling her to the floor so he could hold her in his arms, so they could be chest to chest, as close as their hearts would ever get.
She pulled away all too soon and smacked his shoulder while he tried to steal her lips back. This was going much better than expected, what with all the kissing, but there was a rather martial gleam to her eye.
