Читать книгу The Complete Christmas Collection - Джанис Мейнард, Rebecca Winters - Страница 67

Should he have known this would happen?

Of course he damn well should have.

In fact, to be brutally honest, he had known it would come to this. Exactly this. And he’d gone ahead and done what he wanted to do anyway.

Damien stood in the doorway, holding the tray with the breakfast she would probably never eat, and cursed himself for being a heartless, lust-driven dog. He shouldn’t have come here. He never should have let this thing with them get started in the first place.

She was his friend, dear to him. She deserved so much—everything.

Instead he’d had to go and become her lover when he knew himself and knew how it would end: just like this. With her suffering and him hating himself.

He set down the tray and went to her. “Luce, my darling...”

She had her head in her hands. Her slim shoulders were shaking. He reached for her and she sagged against him with a lost little sob.

He gathered her closer, stroked her soft hair. “Shh...” He knew the words to say, the gentle reassurances. “It’s all right. Don’t cry. Everything will work out....”

“Oh, no.” A gasp, another sob. “I don’t think so.” He felt the warmth of her tears against his throat.

He cradled her face, tipped it up to him, wiped at her tears with his thumbs. Her eyes glittered, wet. Yearning. Her mouth trembled and he wanted to kiss her, to taste the salt and the wet, to pull the covers away and make love to her again.

One more time. Before he left.

He didn’t do what he wanted. For once.

Her eyes sought something in his face. He doubted she found it. She said, “Dami, I’ve been lying. Lying to you. Lying to me. I thought I could do it. Could just keep on lying until after you’d gone.”

He did kiss her then. But he kept the kiss chaste, though her mouth trembled, willing, beneath his.

When he lifted his head, he saw she was on to him. “Kisses can’t keep me from saying it,” she whispered.

“Luce...” It was a warning. And a plea.

She said it anyway. “I love you, Dami. I’m in love with you.”

There. She’d gone and done it. Said the three words that couldn’t be unsaid. The ones that always made him feel restless, eager to be gone.

And she wasn’t finished. “I think I’ve been in love with you since that first night I met you, when you danced with me and treated me with such complete consideration. You talked to me, really talked to me, and you listened, like you really were interested in me and what I had to say, as though I was more than some sickly, scarred-up, skinny girl. Like I was a grown woman, beautiful and whole and strong and well.”

“That was exactly how I saw you.”

Through her tears, she gave him a certain look. Knowing. Patient. “As a grown woman? Hardly. You saw me as a child, Dami. You might even have loved me, too—as a friend, I mean. Or at least felt affection for me right from the first. I knew that you did. I felt that you liked me. I knew you noticed me. And you were kind to treat me as a grown woman when you knew how I longed to be thought of as a fully functioning adult. But you didn’t see me as a woman. Not then. Don’t try to tell me that you did.”

He gave it up. “All right. As a child. I thought of you as childlike. And I adored you from the first.”

“Okay,” she said halfheartedly. “I’ll buy that.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. He grabbed the box of tissues from the nightstand and offered it. She took it, pulled one out, dropped the box on the bed. “You liked me and I loved you. I just didn’t realize the way that I loved you.”

“Luce. It doesn’t matter.”

“But I’ve been dishonest, in my heart.”

He shook his head. “I don’t care.”

She gasped. “But I...I used our friendship to get you to make love with me.”

“Yes, you did. I knew that from the first. You did nothing wrong.”

Her soft mouth twisted. “Why don’t you get it?”

“But, Luce, I do get it.”

“Uh-uh. No. All along I’ve been telling myself that it was just for Thanksgiving, just for these past few days, just for a little while, for experience so I could get some guy like Brandon to look twice at me. I’ve been telling myself that I didn’t want anything permanent, that I only wanted a few lessons in love and then we would go back to being like we were before. That was a lie. A lie, do you hear me? All along, deep down where it matters, in the heart of me where the truth is, I’ve been hoping, praying, longing for you to fall in love with me. I’ve been wanting a chance at forever with you.”

He took her hand. She allowed that, which surprised him a little. Her fingers felt cool and smooth in his. He kissed them. “I lied to you, too.”

“No.” She looked as though she might cry again, those big eyes filling. With the tissue in her free hand, she dashed the tears away.

He confessed. “I came here on Friday because I wanted to see you again, to be with you again. When Rule couldn’t make it for the transit-app meetings, I jumped at the chance to fill in for him.”

Hope lit her wonderful face from within. “You...you wanted to be with me, too?”

“Of course I did. I do, but...”

She saw the truth in his eyes and pulled her hand free of his. Bleakly, she said the rest for him. “Not in a forever way.”

“That’s right.”

Dipping her head, she stared at the tissue between her hands. “So if not in a forever way, what kind of way, exactly?”

He’d thought he’d hated it when she cried. This was worse. But she was Luce and even if he was incapable of giving her the love she deserved, he still adored her, and she wanted the truth now. What else was there to do but lay it out there for her? “You excite me, Luce. From the minute I started to see you as a woman, from that first kiss by the harbor on Thanksgiving Day, I’ve wanted you. I seem to have developed a real obsession with you. It keeps getting stronger. I know I should leave you alone, but I, well, I know you want me, too. I couldn’t stop thinking about you, wanting you. So I came here to you. For more.”

She looked at him sideways and licked her lips, sending a bolt of lust straight to his groin. God, he was hopeless. She asked, “But it’s just sex with you, that’s what you’re saying?”

He nodded. “And I do like you.”

“Like. You like me.” She seemed to be testing the words, turning them over in her mind.

He’d never in his life felt so completely inadequate. “Is that so bad? That I like you?”

“Not...love? Not the forever kind of man-and-woman love?”

“No. Not that.”

“But...could it grow into love? Is that possible?”

“God, Luce. What do you want from me? You know how I am. I told you. I’ve seen the kind of love you’re talking about. My parents have it. Most of my brothers and sisters have it. I understand myself well enough to accept that I don’t have the attention span for that kind of love.”

She tipped her head to the other side and she looked him up and down in a measuring way that made him want to grab her and pull her under him and bury himself in the welcoming wet heat of her. “But you want me? You still want me, even after what I said about loving you, about lying to myself about loving you. You want me right now. You want to grab me and kiss me and do all those things to me that make both of us happy, that make both of us burn.”

He readjusted his robe, though he knew she’d already spotted the evidence that she had it right. “What are you getting at?”

She canted marginally closer. The scent of her drifted to him, unbearably womanly, so damn sweet. “You want me.”

He gritted his teeth. “You keep saying that.”

“But only because you keep saying it. Because I can see it in your face every time you look at me.” She licked her lips again. Why did she keep doing that?

“What the hell?” He jumped to his feet and glared down at her. “What are you doing? What’s going on here?”

She stared up at him. Proud now. Defiant somehow. “I’m not sure I can have children, Dami. I’m not sure it would be safe. Pregnancy puts a big burden on the heart and the circulatory system. I would have to consult with my doctors, assess the risks.”

“Risks?” Now she was scaring him. “Children?” He backed away from her, from the bed. “What do children have to do with anything?”

“Nothing.” Her eyes filled again. She blinked those tears away. “I just, well, I wanted you to know. I want you to know everything. All the truths that are so hard to say.”

“Why?”

She closed her eyes, looked away. But then she straightened her shoulders and faced him again. “Because you are my hero, Dami. You’re the one who danced with me and treated me like a woman when no one else could. You’re the one who encouraged me to follow my dream. And then when Noah wouldn’t let me go, you’re the one who came and got me, the one who freed me, the one who brought me here to New York where I needed to be. You’re the one who sat with me all day Sunday in the hospital, making the fear and the worry bearable for me, because I had to be there for Viv. You’re the one who taught me the magic that can be between a woman and a man. You showed me...everything. And everything that you showed me has been so very beautiful. That’s why I want, why I need, to tell you the truth. That’s why I love you, am in love with you. How in the world could it be any other way for me?”

He felt shame then, a twisting, sour sensation deep in his gut. “I’m not. Not all that.”

“Oh, Dami. You are. And I hope, I pray, that someday you will see that you are.” She pushed back the covers. Naked, glorious, she swung her slim legs over the edge of the bed and stood.

He feared she would come to him, touch him, lift her mouth to him. If she did, he would take her, make love to her now. And that would be another wrong to add to all the rest of it. “What are you after?” He growled the words at her.

She faced him, so beautiful in the gray light of that December morning. Naked and self-contained, her eyes dry now. “I’m going to get my things together and go back to my place.”

“Right now. Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

He wanted to argue with her, to shout at her that they weren’t finished here. But why tell more lies? He might not be ready to let her go yet. But that didn’t mean it was any less over. He couldn’t give her what she needed, what a woman like her deserved.

The least he could do was to let her walk away now that she was ready to leave him.

“Suit yourself.” He went over and poured himself some coffee from the carafe on the tray. Then he dropped into the chair there and sipped slowly as she put on her clothes and gathered up the few things she’d left around the apartment.

In no time, she stood before him, her overnight bag and purse on her shoulder, the fat orange cat under one arm. “Can you just send Quentin down with the litter box and food and water bowls and anything else I’ve forgotten to take?”

He set down the empty coffee cup and considered maybe begging her not to go.

A hero, she’d called him. She had it all wrong.

He said, “Of course I’ll send Quentin down.”

“Merry Christmas, Dami.” And that was it. The end.

He watched her until she went through the door and disappeared from his sight down the hall.