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He brushed his thumb across her cheek as he stared into her big brown eyes. “I need to ask you something.”
“Sounds serious.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Not really serious, just something I’m curious about.”
“Okay. What do you want to know?”
“Saturday night, you never answered my question about why you haven’t been with anyone else.”
She pulled in a deep breath. “You’re a smart man, Chace. I think you can figure it out.”
“I want to hear you say it just to be sure.”
“I can’t believe you’re fishing for compliments.”
Chace couldn’t either, but for some reason he couldn’t explain, he needed to know why. “Just tell me, and I’ll leave you alone.”
She reached up to nip at his bottom lip. “What if I don’t want you to leave me alone?”
“Holly,” he cautioned.
“Okay,” she relented with a roll of her doe-like eyes. “But you have to tell me something first.”
“What?” He had no idea what she might want to know, but if he expected her to answer his question, he needed to answer hers.
“Why did you leave without saying goodbye?”
He felt her words slice right into his heart. “The easy answer is because I was trying to convince myself you never wanted to see me again.” He picked up her hand from his chest. “So, in my mind, I was abiding by what I thought were your wishes.”
“What’s the other answer?”
“I simply couldn’t do it. Because if I’d come to see you before shipping out, I would have begged you not to give up on us. Pleaded with you to wait for me. Made promises that were out of my control. And that wouldn’t have been fair to you. You deserved better. To be happy again. So, although it nearly killed me, I decided walking away would make everything easier to bear for both of us.”
Tears welled up in her darkening eyes. “Did you think that’s all it would take for me to get over you?”
He shrugged. “At that point, I wasn’t sure of anything except that I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I already had.”
She swiped at her eyes. “Well, for the record, you’re a hard man to get over, Chace Dutton. So much so that Ineverdid. And it wasn’t for lack of trying either, because I dated quite a few very nice, attractive, and respectable men, only to run into the same problem every damned time.”
“Yeah? What was the problem?”
“They weren’t you.” She poked him in the chest as she uttered the last word. “Nothing about them measured up, and I gave them more than one opportunity.” She wrinkled her nose. “Well, not all of them, but some.”
It was getting harder and harder to keep the smile off his face. “Did you kiss them?”
She averted her gaze. “Most of them.”
He nodded. “And none curled your toes?” He leaned in closer and ran the tip of his tongue around the shell of her ear. “Or soaked your panties?”
“Only one man has ever soaked my panties,” Holly countered, her voice low. Seductive.
“Good to know I don’t have to worry about any competition, then,” he murmured as he sucked her earlobe into his mouth.
“Have I sufficiently given you the answer you needed to hear?”
“You have.” Though he wanted to continue kissing, tasting, and devouring every inch of her body, Chace pulled his lips away from her skin. There’d be plenty of time for that later. But first, since she’d been so open with him, he decided Holly more than deserved the same from him.
Slowly, he put a few inches between them. “Now, I want to let you in on a few things.” Chace took her hands in his. “First, I never expected to get over you, which is a damned good thing since it didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever happening. Second, even though you said you never expected celibacy from me, I need you to know that the only women I ever slept with were only hook-ups. Nothing more.”
