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She wouldn’t let herself consider what would happen when they’d explored everything and were left with just each other.
“You should feel proud of what you’ve accomplished, not condemn yourself for not having more. You’re enough, just as you are.”
“It’d be different if I wasn’t just a secretary, or if I didn’t write sex books. My parents are both professors. I’m a horrible disappointment to them.” Realizing what she’d said and who she’d said it to, she shook her head and sighed. “Hell, you’re slumming too.”
“Just a secretary? Just write sex books? That’s really who you see when you look in the mirror?” He gripped her elbows and turned her toward him, almost as if he thought he could stare hard enough at her to make her see the truth. “I must be pretty fucking stupid then to be spending all my free time with you then, huh?”
She moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. He rarely got angry, but when he did, watch out. Hot-blooded half-Italian, half-Irish men didn’t only rampage in the bedroom, apparently. “I like who I am,” she said carefully. “I enjoy my jobs, but they’re stepping stones. It’ll change when I finally get some time to write that suspense novel I’ve been toying with?—”
“Why? What will make that different?”
“If I can write a book that lands a big-time publishing contract? Everyone will know. Well, not everyone. But I’ll be able to hold my head high about what I do.”
She’d said the wrong thing. If the acidic taste at the back of her throat didn’t clue her in, the flash of his dark eyes spoke volumes. “You can hold your head high now. The only one who’s letting it fall is you. You have talent. Your work makes people happy and helps them too. That’s not noble enough for you?”
“My parents would never understand. They wouldn’t get that this is just temporary, just until I write the bigger book I have in mind?—”
“Do you understand?” he asked, his voice brutally quiet. “Doyouget it, Elena?”
Not Bella. Elena. Her name sounded so cold on his lips that the snowflakes drifting down around them seemed balmy in comparison. She sucked in a breath, forced it back out again. “Is this our first fight?”
He gazed at her for a while. Long enough that she had time to catalog the way his lashes curled at the ends and the precise tilt of his lips. How his eyes blazed when he was angry, how they cooled to obsidian as the anger passed. “Maybe it’s our last.”
Her belly quivered. “That would be your choice.”
She expected him to march off back to work. He certainly didn’t seem interested in spending any more time in her company.
She wasn’t even sure she blamed him, though part of her wondered why the hell her issues were any of his business.
Sex made for tricky bedfellows, which was one of the many reasons she’d always been so careful about who she slept with. That they never mattered too much.
Too late, Elena.
Much to her surprise, he gripped her icy, gloveless hand in his and tugged her up the sidewalk. “Come on,” he said without looking at her. “You’re going to be late.”
She didn’t argue, though being late was the least of her concerns. Right then, being alone seemed a hell of a lot worse.
Nine
“You’re not eating.”
Enzo glanced down at the beef stew he’d hardly touched and shrugged. His uncle Mike always liked to go Lonegan’s down the street on Fridays for lunch, and since his own appetite extended way beyond Italian cuisine, he definitely didn’t mind. Beef stew, a Reuben sandwich and Irish fries—who could complain?
But today, he wasn’t hungry.
Since the argument he’d had with Elena on Tuesday, they’d barely spoken, though they still met every night to make love. Her touch was a drug to him now, one he didn’t intend to go without. But the conversations in bed afterward, about their days, about work, about life had stopped.
Now the sex lasted until both were too tired to speak, then she got dressed and went home, or vice versa.
He knew they needed to talk. It wasn’t like him to play games or to keep his thoughts to himself. But in this case, the stakes were too high. He wouldn’t lose her.
So did that mean he was doomed to take what he could get—her body—while never feeling as if he understood her heart?
“Son, what’s going on?” His uncle set down his fork and pushed back his own chicken pot pie. “Your father entrusted you to me while you’re in America. You’d tell me if you were in trouble, wouldn’t you?”
Enzo had to smile. “I’m twenty-seven years old. Think I’m probably old enough to take care of myself.”
“Ah, but to Seamus, you’re perpetually twelve, with a penchant for breaking bones and ending up in the principal’s office.”
