Page 33 of Coming Home

"I didn't ask you to clarify."

"You looked like you were holding your breath for an answer."

"I was not."

"You look relieved."

"You're projecting your own ego onto me."

"You're deflecting, Em."

"I'm stating objective facts."

He slowly uncrossed his arms and pushed away from the counter, the movement closing the distance between us by a full, predatory step.

"For the record," he said, his voice dropping into a low, intimate rumble that I felt slide all the way down my spine, "there is no girlfriend. There hasn't been anyone in a long time. I have myself, this glass house, and an aggressive younger sister who expresses her love through Tupperware. You have me to yourself."

"Bold of you to assume I have any use for you."

"Every woman in that studio today seemed to think I had some use."

"Good for them," I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs. "I'm not every woman."

"No." His voice dropped lower, the velvet in it thickening into something dangerous. "You're definitely not."

He was closer than he'd been a second ago. I hadn't even seen him take the step. One moment there had been a comfortable, safe perimeter of kitchen island between us, and the next he was right there, occupying my entire field of vision. I had to tilt my chin up significantly just to hold his gaze. He was wearing the glasses again—those dark frames that made him look like a brilliant academic who just happened to possess the lethal shoulders of an athlete—and his eyes behind the lenses were focused on me with a fierce, unwavering intensity that left me exposed.

From this close, his irises weren't just one shade of blue. They were layered. A dark, midnight rim at the edge, fading into a piercing sky blue near the center, and in this specific afternoon light, with the golden-hour sun bleeding through the glass wall behind him, there were fine streaks of stormy gray woven through the pattern.

He leaned down, his shadow falling over me.

A small, breathless sound escaped my throat. It was not a squeak—I refuse to let history record it as a squeak. It was a perfectly valid, involuntary feminine vocalization any woman would produce if a very tall, breathtakingly beautiful man suddenly invaded the air space directly above her mouth with zero warning.

His eyes locked onto mine, trapping me. His mouth was so close I could feel the warmth of his breath hovering over my lips, and every single coherent, defensive thought in my head evacuated like someone had pulled a fire alarm in an empty building.

"Why did you give up swimming, Emma?"

CHAPTER 12

Emma

The question went straight for the one place I'd spent three long, agonizing years trying to fortify.

I took a sharp step back. The dense, magnetic heat that had been building between us—the charged air that always seemed to thicken the moment his mouth dropped within whispering distance of mine—evaporated like steam rising off a winter pool.

What rushed in to replace it was colder, and older than anything Ralph had stirred up: the habit of walking into every room already braced, already tallying whose eyes dropped to my body before I could get to a chair.

"Isn't it obvious?" I said, my voice sounding smaller, more fragile than I wanted.

"No."

"Ralph. Look at me."

"I am looking at you."

"Then look harder." A hot wave of emotion climbed into my throat, and I couldn't drag it back.

"Look at the weight. Look at the absolute gulf between the golden girl you used to know and the woman standing in your kitchen right now. I'm not exactly the face anyone is putting on a cereal box anymore, Ralph. I don't possess the kind of body that cleanly cuts through water, or fits into a sleek racing suit, or looks elegant standing next to a podium. I'm the before-and-after photo, Ralph, and I'm permanently the after."