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She waved her hand, her temper growing and intensifying like a living thing. ‘Oh, for pity’s sake, will you please just get over that now? I’m not a virgin any more.’ And then she remembered the wording of his note. The note that she’d mooned over and soaked with her own tears for weeks, and her temper ignited. ‘That’s what it meant.’ She fired the words like bullets, glad when he flinched. ‘That crass line about me finding one of the good guys. You wanted me to sleep around. Because until I do I can’t possibly have the emotional maturity to know how I feel—is that it?’
‘What?’ He looked horrified, his face going bloodless beneath his tan. ‘I did not tell you to sleep around.’
‘Didn’t you?’ She slapped her hands on her hips, warming to her theme. ‘Tell me something, Nick. Exactly how many guys do I have to sleep with before I can be trusted to decide for myself who I love?’ She poked a finger into the middle of his chest. Hard. ‘You should probably give me a number, so I can be absolutely sure.’
He grabbed her finger, pulled her close. ‘Forget it. You’re not sleeping with anyone but me,’ he yelled back, his own temper rising to match hers. ‘I gave you the choice and you fell for me anyway. You said so.’ He wrapped his arm round her waist, pulled her flush against him. ‘So now you’re stuck with me.’
Her heart soared at the angry words, and heat pulsed low in her abdomen. This was what she’d dreamed of after he’d left her. That he’d come back. That he’d stake a claim, make a declaration, and finally get past that warped sense of honour that had made him believe he wasn’t good enough for her.
But even as euphoria rushed through her, she refused to give in to the heady thrill. She struggled out of his arms, stepped back. What he offered wasn’t enough. And the new powerful, risk-taking Eva Redmond wasn’t willing to settle for second best any more. She didn’t just want the dream. She wanted the reality—but that meant risking everything.
‘You walked away from me, Nick,’ she said, her voice low. ‘You didn’t give me a choice. You didn’t tell me how you felt. You didn’t give me the chance to tell you how I felt. You simply made the choice for me.’ She blinked back the threatening tears. She had to do it. For his sake as well as her own.
‘That’s not true, I—’
She pressed a finger to his lips, to cut off the denial. ‘What if Tess hadn’t told you I had a new boyfriend, Nick? Would you have come here? Or would you have let me keep on waiting?’
She didn’t need to hear his answer, she could see it in his face. See it in the way he stiffened and thrust his fists into the pockets of his jeans. ‘I wanted to leave it up to you,’ he muttered.
She shook her head. ‘You ran away, Nick. Just like you’ve been doing all your life. When things get hard, when things get scary or complicated. When you can’t control the way you feel. That’s what you do, you run away.’ She sniffed, scrubbed away a solitary tear.
‘I do love you.’ She cupped his cheek, felt the rasp of his stubble and the muscle in his jaw tighten and knew that however much she’d tried to deny it, that would always be true.
‘I love the dangerous, wild and exciting man you are in bed and out. And the kind, tender and stupidly noble man you don’t even know is there. And I feel nothing but sorrow for the boy you were. Who discovered something devastating about himself at the most difficult moment imaginable, and couldn’t cope.’ She let her hand slip away from his face. ‘But I don’t want another fling. I want to make a life with you. And I can’t do that unless you love me back enough to finally let that boy go and stop running.’
Her panicked heartbeat flicked in her chest and she swallowed hard, the boulder of emotion in her throat threatening to choke her. She straightened, scared of what he was going to say. Had she pushed him too far? Did he even want to make a life with her? She didn’t know. But one thing she did know: if he ran now, if he rejected her, if she’d asked too much of him, it was better to know. Because she would rather survive the heartache, than live with a lie…
‘You’ve changed,’ Nick said, his heart so swollen, he was pretty sure it was about to burst. He couldn’t believe she’d offered him everything. Knew he would never deserve it.
She gave a stiff nod, the wry tilt of her lips crucifying him. ‘I know. I’m not a doormat any more.’
He choked
out a laugh. Then grasped her wrists, hugged her to him. ‘You were never a doormat. You were just so…’ he searched for the word ‘… sweet.’
She cringed. ‘I’m not sweet. And I don’t want to be.’
She was. And she always would be. But he knew that wasn’t what she needed to hear.
‘The point is, I’m strong.’ She looked up at him. ‘You don’t have to run away, you can just tell me to my face you don’t love me. And I’ll survive.’
He clasped his arms round her back, and sank his head into her hair to inhale her wonderful scent. ‘Yeah, you’ll survive.’ He hugged her trembling body to his. ‘But I sure as hell won’t,’ he said, wanting to absorb her into him so he would never be without her again. ‘I don’t just love you, Eva. I’m pretty sure I can’t live without you.’
He drew away, held her at arm’s length, then saw the smile on her face and took courage from it. ‘The last six weeks have been agony. I wanted to contact you countless times, but it was easier to pretend I was being noble, that I was giving you the choice, than admit the truth. That I was scared out of my wits you’d already come to your senses and realised I didn’t deserve you.’
‘But that’s mad, you do deserve—’
He framed her face in his palms, placed a tender kiss on her lips to silence her.
When he pulled back, the stunned pleasure on her face sent his heart soaring into the stratosphere. ‘It doesn’t matter any more. Because I’m through running. And I’m going to spend the rest of my life proving that I do deserve you.’
She flung her arms round his neck, leaned into his body. ‘You really don’t have to do that,’ she said, sending him a saucy look under her eyelashes that had lust swelling right alongside the joy. ‘But if you insist, I know a very good place you can start.’
He threw back his head and laughed—the sheer elation making him light-headed.
Sobering, he let his hands travel down to caress her buttocks through the bulky raincoat, then pulled her against his hardening erection, eager to begin the rest of his life with this sweet, smart and incredibly strong woman by his side.
‘That’s funny, because so do I,’ he murmured.
