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But he’d seen the way she’d looked at Lucien and India tonight. He knew she wanted a relationship like that and he couldn’t give that to her. He just wasn’t that kind of man.
He found her nightshirt on the hook behind the bathroom door and put it on her before leading her to her bed. Once they were both settled beneath the covers and she was nestled close against his side, cuddled up on his chest, he felt her relax. She put her hand over his chest and kissed him right there over his heart.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For?” he asked. He didn’t think he’d done anything for her that she didn’t deserve. Alysse had given him gifts that he’d just taken blindly before he recognized how much she meant to him.
“The best day,” she said. “I have spent the entire day with you and it wasn’t at all what I expected.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. You were everything I ever dreamed you would be. I thought this morning that we were headed for a breakup tonight but the day turned around, didn’t it?”
Her words were like a dagger to him. He couldn’t give her days like this. Today had almost been the end of him because he’d felt too much. Men who had this much to lose never made it back.
“Today was nice,” he said. “But it wasn’t anything too special.”
“It was to me. No one—not even my dad—has ever given me a day like this. You made me feel like a princess and not the little-girl kind.”
“What kind then?” he asked her.
“Like a woman who can have it all. You were my white knight today. It was perfect.”
She was killing him. She was unable to contain her excitement, and he knew that was because she’d started caring for him again.
And he didn’t want to—hell, he wasn’t going to let her down again. So if that meant that he had to stay here with her for the rest of his life then he’d do it. He didn’t know how he’d do it but he’d figure it out.
For that smile he’d move the world.
“Why are you watching me like that?”
“Like what?” he asked.
“Kind of sad and sort of...scared almost,” she said.
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “And I don’t know about being any knight. My armor is tarnished. Can’t you see that? There is nothing hero-like about me at all.”
She gently kissed him on the chest. “Everything about you is heroic.”
He knew she was wrong. Still, he stayed where he was and held her as she drifted off to sleep. He was surrounded by Alysse and it was the closest thing to heaven that he knew he’d ever experience in this life or the next one.
Her breath stirred the hair on his chest and, as her sleep deepened, she snored softly and even that tiny imperfection just made him love her more. He held her as close as he dared so he wouldn’t disturb her, and he felt the way he had back in that Vegas hotel room—afraid of her and for her. Afraid to be the man she clearly needed him to be because he wasn’t sure he really had it in him.
He’d never in his life wanted anything more than he wanted to keep Alysse with him. But he knew just as surely as the desire formed inside him that he would hurt her, and he couldn’t live with himself if he did that.
He tried different scenarios in his head, trying to figure out how he was going to be able to keep her safe and keep her in his arms at the same time, but there wasn’t one that would keep her happy.
As the first fingers of dawn crept across the room he loosened himself from her hold and slid out of her bed. He found his clothing in the living room and dressed quickly, getting a hard-on from remembering the sexy dance they’d shared here last night.
And from the memories of their wedding night. He picked up his leather jacket, which she’d kept from the morning balloon ride, and the picture of the two of them that the pilot had taken fell out. He stooped to pick it up and then stood staring at them. He looked too hard for her.
She deserved that white knight she’d always wanted. A man who could love her and not worry about her leaving. A man she didn’t have to worry would leave her. And if he didn’t walk out this door today, Jay knew there was always a chance that he’d be taken from her life by war.
He had no other training and even if he worked with Lucien there was no guarantee that he’d be back home with Alysse every night. He’d promised her mother that if he couldn’t ensure Alysse would be happy with him, he’d get out of her life and never come back.
