Authors: Susan Sey
He found his feet and stalked
across
her
bedroom
, following the trail of clothes
toward the door
. “
I’m not afraid of anything, Nixie.
” He kept his back to her as he pulled up his pants and jammed his sockless feet into his loafers.
“You shouldn’t be. I mean, come on. The dangerous stuff is already out of the way, right? The embarrassing declaration of unrequited love. The ill-advised leap into bed.
There’s no use panicking
now
.”
“I’m not panicking.” Much. He glanced back, found her flushed and rumpled in the middle of that giant bed they’d used every inch of, a happily fallen angel. He looked away, but the image was already burned in his brain, on his heart.
“Then stay.” She leaned forward,
her
want
tugging at him like
a deadly and hypnotic undertow
.
“
What harm could possibly come from hanging around and enjoying a little post-coital snack?”
He paused in the act of stuffing his arm into a wrinkled sleeve
to stare at her
. “Post-coital
snack
?”
She
smiled
.
“
I’m hungry. Aren’t you?
”
He checked in with his stomach. It was tight and hot with the desire to stay and the knowledge that he couldn’t. “No.”
“
A little cold pizza isn’t going to voodoo you into loving me back,
you know.”
He flinched.
“
Nixie, come on.
”
“No, seriously.
This needs to be said
.
We had sex, Erik. Really great, wall-banging, mattress-on-fire sex. Enhanced, for me at least, by the fact that I’m in love with you.”
He concentrated on buttoning his shirt, shaking off the silken strands she was spinning between them each time she said those words.
“But I understand that you don’t feel the same way. I understand that you have a lifetime of experience telling you not to take a chance on me.”
She rose, pulling the sheet off the bed and twisting it around her like a toga. She scooped up one of his socks and handed it to him. “
I get that. I respect that, okay?
You don’t need to love me back for us to enjoy this...whatever it is
.
For however long it lasts.
”
He stuffed the sock into
his pocket and looked at her.
“
No
.”
She frowned.
“
No
what
?
”
“
No I’m not going to take advantage of how you feel about me to bang you into next week whenever the spirit moves
me, all right? You love me. I don’t love you back. That means the two consenting adults rule doesn’t apply. Anything I take from you is stolen, and I don’t want that
.”
The laughing invitation went out of her eyes. “I see.”
Erik hated himself.
Whoever said the truth would set you free was a lying bastard. The truth was
carving
Nixie up like a Christmas ham, and it wasn’t
doing
him any favors either. But what was the alternative? Hand
ing
over his heart on a silver platter so she could carve that up instead?
“For Christ’s sake, don’t look like that!” he said. “I’m not trying to hurt your feelings. But
I spent my whole life watching what happens when two people who aren’t equally in love try to make it work
.
My dad spent
twenty five years
loving my mom first, best
,
and always. I can’t remember a time w
hen w
e weren’t waiting
around
for
her to return the favor. Waiting for her to come home, to be a wife, a mother. To r
ealize her family was
worth at least as much as that
vast, faceless constituency
of hers
.
But s
he served at the pleasure of the people,
and as it turned out, the people
were
damn
possessive
.” He
gave her a very steady look
. “Sound familiar?”
Her eyes skated away. “Erik, please
--”
“I was a sophomore in college
when my dad
had a massive heart attack
. It was the
Tuesday before Thanksgiving.
I came home for the holiday and
found him
on the kitchen floor
, two days dead
.”
Her f
ace
froze
, her mouth
gathered into
a pink bud of sympathy. “I’m so sorry,” she said softly.
“I was, too. Still am.
A man that good should never have
died alone.”
Erik lifted
his shoulders, the memory
a burden he’d never learned to carry comfortably. “
He loved my mother exactly the way he promised: better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness, health. She’s the one who broke her word.”
“
I’m not your mother. I
wouldn’t do that to you.”
“
No. I’d do it to you.
”
“What?”
He stuffed his shirt tails into his pants and walked back to her.
God, he was making a hash of this. But she had to understand. She had to get it, once and for all, that he wasn’t going to love her back.
It was just too damn dangerous.
He took her hands in his and forced himself to look down into the bewildered hurt swimming under the bravado in her eyes.
“
Nixie, I don’t doubt your...feelings for me. And I’m humbled. I don’t deserve that kind of gift.”
“Why not?”
She
gazed up at him and he could see
where his whiskers had marked
the delicate skin of her throat. A thrill of possession shot through him, primitive and hot and unwelcome
.
He clamped down on the unruly tangle of emotions and forced himself to move forward.
To finish it.
“Because while I don’t doubt you love me, I don’t love you back.
And I’m never going to.”
She jerked back as if slapped, and Erik missed her hands like he’d miss his own.
“But I do like you, Nixie. Genuinely. And that’
s why I refuse to do to you what
my mother did to my father, to me.
I refuse
to string you along with well-timed scraps of affection, just enough to keep you paralyzed with the false hope that one of these days I’m going to come to my senses and give you something I’m just not capable of. It would be criminally selfish, and while I’m a lot of things I’m no
t proud of, I’m not cruel
.”
She eased away from him, pain and wonder in her eyes. “You could have fooled me.”
“Nixie, please. I know what it feels like to be where you are. I’m trying to do the right thing.”
She gave a bitter, incredulous laugh. “Bullshit. You’re scared. But it’s easier to
be Mr. Nobility and reject me
than to look inside your heart and figure out what you’re so damn afraid of
.”
She
turned to
grab at her robe with shaking hands. She stuffed herself into it and when she spun back to him, he braced himself for the blast of rage and betrayal he knew he deserved. But her face was cool, composed.
Erik took it like a punch to the gut. He’d been prep
ared for her
anger
, her hurt. Anything but this perfectly polite
absence
he’d demanded.
It was as if
she’d imagined wonderful things behind the closed door of his head but
when she’d finally pried it open
had found it barren and empty.
Everything about her, from the resigned set of that mischievous mouth to the sudden distance in those verdant eyes, spoke not of love betrayed but
of
love disappointed.
“I can’t give you what you need,” he said,
and the words sounded
pathetic even to himself.
“
Of course
you can. You choose not to.”
He spread his hands. “I choose not to
, then
.”
She sucked in a sharp breath, and something stirred in those unreadable eyes, something hot and hurt and furious. “You’re a coward,” she said, her words cracking through the confused brew of emotions hanging in the air between them. “You don’t deserve me.”
“No. I don’t.”
She
s
trode to the bedroom door, pulled
it open and turned on him with utter composure. “I want you to leave.”
He nodded, misery clutching at his throat. God damn, why did
doing
the right thing always have to kick the shit out of him?
The
scent of lemons, sweet and
hot
, reached out to him as he
passed her, and he stopped. He opened his mouth but whatever he’d planned to say evaporated in the face of her icy, magnificent disdain.
It was too late, he realized. Too late to save himself. Because maybe he could resist the laughing, smart-mouthed woman who charmed every human being she’d ever met. The lonely seeker who thought she could build a home out of volunteer work and disgusting eggplant-based casseroles. The broken woman-child
who desperately wanted
a family she could count on with him as the cornerstone.
But
throw in
this
woman with the endlessly generous heart he’d just shattered,
holding herself together with nothing but
blazing courage and haughty determination? She destroyed him
, and forced him to admit the truth, if only to himself.
S
omehow, without his permission or even his consciousness, he’d fallen
madly
in love with Nixie
Leighton-Brace.
And not just with the famous face, the million dollar smile and the infectious easy charm, either.
No
, he’d gone and
fallen in love with
the whole
complicated
package
.