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“Is that all?”
“Nothing with you is ever easy for me to accept,” she said, at last.
“Like what?” he asked. His sincere concern got her every time.
“Everything. Though you try to hide it, you’re a really caring man. I can see the life that you have and I’m wondering how I can fit in, with my big family.”
“We’ll just take it step by step.”
He pulled her into his arms, framing her face with his large hands. He brushed his thumb over her lower lip.
Her throat clogged with tears and she could only stare up at him. Then he lowered his head to hers and kissed her. Having been apart from him for four long weeks, she knew exactly what was missing without him in her life.
And his words and this evening told her he’d felt the same way. He hadn’t said anything concrete about a future together, but she knew they were building toward one and that frightened her. She wasn’t sure she was ready to commit herself to him, but knew she didn’t want to live without him.
ANNIE STARED AT HIM so intently he was afraid of what she was trying to see in his expression. Afraid that she might find that he wanted to bind her to him now before she found the thing that had made other women leave him in the past. Jared knew it wasn’t something unidentified, like he’d just thought. That thing that drove them away was his coldness, that inner core of himself that he never allowed any of them to breach.
“This is nice,” she said, as they danced around his living room.
“I know.”
“I’d forgotten how arrogant you can be.”
That didn’t bother him. He’d always seen arrogance and confidence as sides of the same coin. Success was driven by self-confidence.
“You don’t show it all the time, but you did when we first met and you are now. What’s up with that?”
There was something almost defensive in her tone. It wasn’t the reaction he expected from her. Annie just wasn’t good at hiding what she felt and he could tell he’d backed her into a corner.
“You have a way of bringing out that side of me.”
“That doesn’t sound good,” she said.
He rubbed the back of his neck. “I think it only happens when I’m going to ask you something and I’m not sure of what your answer will be.”
“What are you going to ask me?”
He wasn’t as sure of himself as he’d been just a few minutes earlier. He was botching this up. He drew her back over to the table and asked her to sit down. He went to the desk where the computer sat and opened the top drawer. Inside was the velvet box he’d put there earlier. He removed the box, and then returned to the table, setting it next to his empty champagne glass.
“Our time apart made me realize exactly how different our relationship is from every other one I’ve had in the last few years.”
“Me, too,” she said, taking his hand in both of hers. “Being with you makes me feel good.”
“I’m glad,” he said, lifting her hand to his mouth to drop a kiss on the back of it.
He pulled his hands back and pushed the velvet jewelry box on the table toward her. He thought of the sapphire choker he’d gotten in Colombia. As soon as he’d seen it in the window he’d been unable to get the image of the necklace around her neck out of his head.
She smiled at him. “For once I have a gift for you, too.”
“What?”
She reached into the large bag she carried around with her. “This is for you.”
She passed a large square package over to him and he was dumbfounded. He’d received few presents since his parents’ deaths more than ten years ago. Most of his gifts had been from business associates.
“Open it,” she said.
He reached for the present. The wrapping was colorful, with whimsical penguins on brown craft paper. He ran his finger over the penguins, almost afraid to open it.
He removed the paper and set it aside, opening the box that held a framed picture of the two of them. One that had been snapped at her family’s picnic. There was an inscription on the bottom of the frame that read “I see a man of integrity when I look at you.”
“Thank you,” he said, touched beyond measure that she had gotten him a gift. That she had thought of him and their first meeting after so long apart.
“You’re welcome,” she said. “I’m not good with words, but it seemed important to underscore what I found in your face when I was looking through my lens.”
She couldn’t know that he’d always tried to live up to the model of a man his father had been. That integrity had been one of the cornerstones of Benjamin MacNeil.
