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No matter how much more he wanted. No matter how much he wondered how his lips would feel against hers. How it would feel to wake up to her sleeping face, with her tousled hair and her soft skin, or to talk over their plans for the day while they drank coffee and ate eggs in the breakfast nook.
How it would feel to have everything except loneliness.
“You’re thoughtful,” she murmured from against his side.
He looked down at her. “I might have been watching the movie.”
“But you weren’t. You were tense, and your brow was all scrunched up.”
“Remind me to be careful about brow scrunching,” he said with a chuckle. “I was thinking too hard about things I shouldn’t even ponder.”
“Penny for your thoughts? Also, can I borrow a penny?”
That drew a laugh out of him. “You’re easy to talk to. I want to tell you everything. This, though… It’s the one thing I’m afraid to tell you.”
“Why?”
“Because right now, I have this. You, here. A movie. A promise of playing games together. Our talks in the hallways when we catch each other there during the day. I have these things, and I don’t want to lose them. They mean too much, and it would be wrong to insinuate I was anything but contented with them. Cuddling with you here, spending time with you, if you never gave me more than this, I would still count myself lucky to have what I do.”
“And yet?”
He sighed and turned his head to rest his lips against her hair. “And yet, if I could have more, I would take it in a heartbeat. Telling you that might startle you. Or make you uncomfortable. It might make things awkward between us. Being greedy might lose me what I have now, and that’s not a risk I can take.”
The words tumbled out of his mouth, then lapsed into silence. His heart sank as the quiet stretched on.Did I put my foot in it? I said too much. I should have deflected the question. She’s probably wondering how to excuse herself back to bed. Or the States.Yet she hadn’t tensed, or even shifted away from her place curled against his side, and he gripped the hope he hadn’t ruined it all as hard as he could.
“I understand,” she said at last, voice soft and as hesitant as he’d felt. “You’re my boss. You have such a complicated life, and maybe it doesn’t have room for someone like me in it. There’s been so much upheaval in your family already. Your mother would surely have something to say. I don’t want to reach for more and ruin what we have now. Ilikethis. I want us to have a future as friends, and coworkers. Asking for a future beyond that might break what we’ve got.”
“And I couldn’t have that. You’ve become a friend so quickly, and I’m already scared to lose it.” He squeezed his arm to draw her closer.
She leaned in tightly and turned so she could wrap her arm around his midsection. “I’m not so easily lost as that. You’re my friend, first and always. If you weren’t my boss, I would have asked you on a date already. Except if you weren’t my boss, I never would have met you.”
“Ironic, isn’t it?” Her hair smelled gorgeous, the faintest echoes of shampoo mixed with the smell that was hers alone. “If I weren’t your boss, I would accept you asking me out. Would you kiss on the first date?”
“Oh yes. We might not even make it all the way through the date.” Her weight shifted to lean on him more fully, arm still draped across his stomach. “You won’t be my boss forever, though. So, we’re friends for now. Good friends. The kind who cuddle on the couch.”
“Good friends,” he agreed. “Until circumstances change.”
“Until circumstances change.” Her head lifted to look up at him. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend than you.”
Her lips were right there, so close to his. Tilted up, almost an offering, turned up at the corners and all too appealing. He could feel her breath on his face, see the emotions turning in her eyes, and he knew she felt it, too. The draw that pulled their faces together. The temptation that ached to have its way.
It would be so easy to kiss her. Once. Twice. Until they forgot the movie, and the rules, and everything they had just agreed to. Easier to kiss her than to hold back, trembling, to kiss her forehead instead.
He did the hard thing. The right thing. His lips brushed her forehead, and his heart protested his sense of honor.
“Me, either,” he murmured against her hairline. “I couldn’t ask for a better friend than you.”
7
The Inner Workings of Hearts
“And then I told him, if you can’t figure out how to work a simple zipper, how can I believe you know how to work what’s beneath it?”
Hanna couldn’t remember a time when she had laughed so hard as she did looking at dresses with Vivian. Two of the maids had outdone themselves, not only hanging the dresses up to look at but acquiring dress forms to display the choicest ones. With Hanna’s help, Vivian rolled between them, stopping in front of each to reminisce, tell stories, and remember the young woman named Vivian who’d had such adventures in life and love.
“What did he do?” Hanna asked, once she could breathe again.
“Gaped like a fish,” Vivian said wryly, then winked. “But his brother assured me he had no trouble with zippers, or other objects you had to fit neatly together. He didn’t lie, either. He certainly did know how to put things together snugly and with great skill.”
