AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Why couldn’t I? Why would I have made it worse? Damn it, Hailey, we love each other. We’re supposed to be able to work through these things together,” he declared, shaking the very earth from beneath her feet.
He said it so easily!
Like he really meant it.
“This came as out of the blue to me as it did to you, Hailey. Unless you’ve been pining for me since we first met.” James rolled his eyes at his own words.
“No,” she told him truthfully. “Not from the start. I’ve always been wary around you though. And I’ve always thought you could hurt Aidan, and that put me more on edge. But this past couple of years… since I moved in with Mark, I guess, I saw you in a different light.” She shuddered. “I think that’s why Labor Day happened.”
He blinked at her, apparently surprised at her response. “What did you see in me?” he asked softly.
She ducked her head, then reached for a napkin when she saw her fingers were stained with yogurt dip. “You were as reckless as ever.” She closed her eyes, hiding from him. Hell, hiding from herself. “You’d just done that stupid bungie jump over the Amazon, and were still riding the adrenaline high even though it had happened days before. You were…” She swallowed. “Incandescent. You drew me like a moth to a flame. I couldn’t not approach you. I’ve always stayed out of your way. You’re too… magnetic, and I didn’t want to be burned, but that day I couldn’t. I had to be near you. It was like a compulsion.”
“And you were so disapproving,” he reminisced, a strange smile curving his lips. “I always liked that. You never hung on my every word. You were never impressed with the stuff I
did just for the sake of it. You always told me how it was. Didn’t matter if you thought I wouldn’t like what you had to say.” His lips twitched. “In fact, if I remember rightly, you called my trip to the Amazon a waste of money, and a huge blot of my carbon footprint on the environment. Something for which I ought to be ashamed, when all I was doing was acting like a pleasure-seeking junkie on the make.”
The words rang a bell, and stunned, she asked, “You liked that?”
He rolled his eyes. “What do you think, Hailey?” he demanded. “Very few people aren’t yes-men around me. Aidan, your parents, you. Maybe a couple more. No women, though. They all do as I bid, eager to please me, to keep me sweet. You seem to find pleasure in pissing me off. The contrast is very…” He frowned, as though he was hearing his own words and was bewildered by them. “Hard to get used to.”
She shuddered at the heat in his scowling gaze. Yes, he was mad at her and how she always fought with him, but he was also turned on by the thought, by the memories. “I feel the same.”
He licked his lips. “Is that all a declaration I’m going to get?”
Hailey bowed her head, then, even though she was shaking inside, whispered, “I-I love you too.”
“The roast lamb’s a little past its time to reciprocate the feelings, babe. Me, on the other hand, I’m alive and kicking and haven’t been in the oven for the past four hours.”
She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face at his chivvying. Peeking up at him, she confessed, “I love you too.” Her grin didn’t diminish though. He always made her feel like this. Like she could laugh and laugh and laugh, then whack him in the belly for irritating the hell out of her. Like she could hold him so tight she’d never know where he began and she ended, then push him off his chair for being such a pain in her ass.
He’d never not inspired contradictory emotions in her. Maybe that was what had always kept her on edge. She needed that, Hailey realized. He was constantly surprising her. Constantly turning her world on its head.
Staid Mark had never stood a chance when she had a man like James in her life.
Heck, no man had.
“Where has this even come from?” she said on a groan, picking up her juice to hide behind the glass. “How is it I can feel so much for you and so quickly?”
James eyed her across the table as he popped a bite of roast lamb into his mouth. Ugh. Men. How could he eat at a time like this? Her world was up in the air, and all because of him. Didn’t he feel the tremors too?
“You think it’s quick?” he finally asked.
“I don’t know.” She toyed with a piece of pita bread, then looked up at him through her lashes. “Don’t you?”
“How long have we known each other, Hailey?”
“Since you and Aidan went to college. I remember you coming over that first Christmas.”
“Yeah, because I had nowhere else to go. Aidan took pity on me,” he said with a rueful grin, but she knew that grin hid a hurt he’d never be willing to discuss. It went too deep and was far too old. His relationship with his parents had always been of interest to her, and now because she cared, she hurt for him. Wished there was something she could do, but knew there was no hope of that.
“Do you really think this has happened so quickly when we’ve known each other so long?” he asked softly, his eyes narrowed as though she were a puzzle he needed to solve. Stat.
When he put it like that…?
“I-I guess not.”
He sighed, apparently hearing the hesitation in her voice. Pursing his lips, he murmured, “Question. Why don’t you trust me?”
