by BETH KERY
The idea frightened her a little. It also pulled at her. Part of her was willing to go back to that selfish agreement they’d made, because at least she’d get to be with him. Love him . . . even if silently.
And that realization about herself frightened her. She was willing to expose herself to so much hurt, so much heartache, just to see his face again, just to touch him once more.
No one had told her that falling in love could be so painful. So risky. Or if they had, she’d never fully understood until that moment.
She entered her apartment, her heartbeat starting to thrum very loud in her ears. Of course, she’d been aware of the time all night.
It was currently a few minutes until ten.
She paused in the hallway for a full minute, listening to her mind screaming caution at her, feeling her heart throbbing another answer altogether.
Her heart won out, apparently. All she knew was that she found herself headed down the hallway like a sleepwalker to the dark guest bedroom. Her fingers paused next to the switch on the lamp. She listened for a breathless moment to the blood surging in her veins.
The light switch clicked. The empty room was illuminated. Her heart seemingly lodged at the base of her throat, she walked over to the window. Dozens of scenarios flashed through her panicking brain regarding what she might view in Trey’s bedroom.
Not one of them included a dark room with absolutely nothing to see.
She inhaled choppily, disappointment slicing through her.
Then it happened: lights went on in the midst of the dark room. She stared at a huge, illuminated Christmas tree in the dark window.
She couldn’t believe her eyes.
Blinking back tears, she stepped closer to the window and placed her hand on the cold pane. She soaked in the vision, incredulous. He’d put up his Christmas tree in his bedroom.
For her. It had to have been for her.
She made out a slight movement just to the right of the large tree. In the soft glow of the lights, she made out his tall figure. Her heart did a double beat at seeing him step out of the shadows. He placed his hand on the window, his position mirroring hers.
Trey.
The connection she felt with him in that moment seemed to cut down to her very bones. It was a feeling that surpassed the empty space between them, a sensation that canceled out all their previous selfish, clueless motivations. At that moment, she saw him clearly. And she saw herself, as he saw her, in all her flawed, layered, bewildering complexity.
And the truth was, she liked what she imagined she saw through his eyes.
She inhaled shakily as relief swept through her, cold and refreshing as a sluicing stream.
He wasn’t seeing something false when he looked at her. Even when she’d convinced herself she’d been playing a part, he’d seen her truly. What he’d done for her, putting up that Christmas tree for her to see because she’d told him she’d been too grief-stricken to do it for herself: those weren’t the actions of a man who was interested in her just for sex, or for her similarity to her sister, or for any other reason but one.
He cared about her—Eleanor.
She lifted her hand and gave a gesture of hopeful beckoning. The tension level of his body seemed to break slightly, and she saw him nod once before he turned to leave the room.
TWENTY-FIVE
She’d never been as anxious as she was when she heard his knock on her front door. She felt chilled and prickly with nerves. Hope and uncertainty mingled in her awareness. She kept thinking about the Christmas tree he’d put up for her to view. It’d been the sweetest gift. It took her breath away.
Her hand shook as she turned the knob.
She paused holding open the door, soaking in the image of him as if she were starved and his image could feed her. He wore a pair of faded jeans that fit his narrow hips and long legs with casual, sexy perfection and a striped button-down. His black peacoat was unbuttoned, as if he hadn’t bothered fastening it when she’d signaled for him to come over to her condo.
His blue eyes seemed alight as they moved over her and finally latched on her face. Her mouth opened. She felt so much, but she didn’t know what to say. He frowned and stepped across the threshold. He pushed her into the hallway and let the door slam shut behind them. His big hands cradled her jaw, and then he was kissing her with that honest, blatant hunger that she loved, and that heated her to the very core of her being.
“I thought you agreed the awkwardness had to stop between us,” he growled softly next to her lips a moment later. His mouth moved, capturing a teardrop that had fallen down her cheek.
“Thank you for putting the Christmas tree there,” she murmured shakily.
“I put it up for you. Me. Not my maid.”
“It’s so pretty. That was so sweet of you.”
His eyes flashed. “I’d give you much more,” he said gruffly. “If you’d let me, Eleanor.”
She nodded toward the living room. “Come and sit down?” she asked. “I have something I want to tell you.”
His face went carefully blank at that, but he followed her into the living room. They sat down together on the couch, a few inches separating them. She tried to gather her words as the silence pressed down on her eardrums.
“I owe you an apology,” she finally said, staring at her hands resting on her thighs.
“Why?”
“For not talking to you for more than a week.” She swallowed thickly. “But for more than that.” She forced herself to meet his stare. “I’ve been so afraid since we started sleeping together that you’d find out the truth about me.”
“What truth is that?” he asked, his eyebrows slanting.
“That I’m not really daring or super confident or exciting,” she said in a small voice. “That I was putting on an act in order to get your attention.” She cleared her throat uncomfortably. “And like you’ve said before, I was pretty mercenary about doing it. It was incredibly selfish.” Shame slinked into her awareness. She couldn’t bring herself to meet his blazing stare. “My mother said she thought I was acting out my grief about Caddy. That I was trying to be like her, to fill the void of Caddy being gone.”
“Is that true?” he asked. “You seduced me out of grief?”
“No,” she whispered, meeting his stare even though tears had gathered in her eyes. “I don’t think it is. Not primarily anyway. When Caddy was dying—” She gasped softly and paused for a few seconds, gathering herself. “She told me she didn’t have any regrets. That she’d lived each day to its fullest. She asked me to try to do that with my life, to live my passion.” She sniffed and wiped an errant tear off her cheek. “And I did,” she said, meeting Trey’s stare. “Ever since I first saw you over a year ago, you became the target of my passion. I couldn’t stop thinking about you. I would have done anything”—her voice broke, and she inhaled— “to be with you. So I hatched up this plan to seduce you. I wouldn’t let myself think about what would happen after I did it. It was single-minded of me, and selfish, and for that, I’m sorry. I refused to examine my motivations, so I didn’t understand them.”
“Do you now?”
She strained to read his expression, but she couldn’t. She had no clue in that moment how he’d react to her confession, but nothing less than honesty was available to her at that moment. Nothing else would do anymore. She’d reached the end of the script as far as her role.
“I think I might have fallen in love with you a little, as unlikely as that seems, just by looking inside your world, just by watching you breathe, sleep, move and exist,” she said softly. “It’s the only thing that really makes sense, in the end. I know you thought I was some kind of practiced exhibitionist and voyeur, but I’d never done anything like that before. I’m not the kind of woman you were used to.” She gave a ragged laugh at the understatement. “I’m not bold or experienced or sexy—�
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“Wrong.”
She blinked and glanced at him, startled at his harsh utterance.
“You’re unbelievably sexy. And you may not want to admit it, Eleanor, but you are an exhibitionist. An incredible one. I can’t take my eyes off you when you start to dance.”
Her lower lip trembled. “I’ve never really thought of myself that way before. I was the boring one in the family. The bookworm. In seducing you, I felt like I completely stepped out of myself. I became something different.” She met his stare entreatingly. “But you have to believe me when I say that I wasn’t channeling Caddy to get through my grief. That wasn’t it.”
“Then why did you get so upset when you suspected Caddy and I had been involved?”
“I wasn’t sure what I thought then,” she said starkly. “It all just struck me as so bizarre.”
“Yeah,” he said grimly. “Me too.”
“But it was more than just strange. I felt like Cinderella for a minute there, like the prince was staring at me in rags. That moment, when I realized you and Caddy had a connection, it just seemed like the magic fell away.”
“Magic?”
“Yeah, the illusion I’d created for you disappeared.” She sniffed and swiped at an escaped tear.
“Why then?” Trey demanded. She heard the puzzlement in his tone, and the lump in her throat swelled bigger. “Why did it disappear when you heard I knew Caddy?”
“Because Caddy was the real thing, and I was just a stand-in. That’s what it felt like to me for most of my life, even if I don’t feel that way anymore,” burst out of her throat. She inhaled raggedly when she saw his stunned expression. “Not when it comes to us, anyway.”
Trey seemed to consider what she’d said for a moment.
“Your sister was a special woman. I liked her a lot. Did you know she and I were the same age, and that we had the same graduation years?”
“I hadn’t thought about that,” Eleanor said, made wistful for some reason by his question.
“Well, we did. And did you know that my assistant used to bring her hot cocoa when we were working together on something in the office?” he asked with a small smile. Her throat too tight to respond, Eleanor just shook her head. “A little thing you two had in common. The Briggs sisters and their hot chocolate. And I knew about it, firsthand.” He reached and grabbed her hand. He squeezed it warmly. “I thought about it a lot in the past couple weeks. It’s horrible that Arcadia passed so young. But I’m glad I knew her in the time she was here. I’m glad I knew her for you. She was special to you. And I know why, at least partially. That means something, Eleanor.”
He was right. It came to her in a rush of amazement, what a blessing it was that the man she’d fallen in love with had known the light that was Caddy before she’d left this world. He let go of her hand and curved his fingers around her jaw. Her pulse began to throb at her throat when he turned her face to fully meet his stare.
“I admired your sister a lot. But I wasn’t in love with her, Eleanor. Far from it.”
“I know that now,” she assured. “I talked to Sandra Banks, her best friend, about you and Caddy earlier tonight. I guess I just needed an outside source for some perspective. She told me that you were the one to suggest you and Caddy keep things on a professional basis. You didn’t want to cloud things with her and ruin your working relationship.”
“Are you okay with it all, then?”
She met his gaze squarely and nodded.
His finger moved on her cheek. “I don’t know what to say about all this stuff about you acting and not being honest with me. Are you telling me you were faking your attraction to me? Or your response in bed? Your feelings for me in general?”
Heat rushed through her. “God, no. Nobody could be that good of an actor,” she exclaimed.
He exhaled roughly and shook his head. His hand moved, smoothing back the hair at her temple. Her skin tingled beneath his touch. “Then you weren’t acting.”
“As it turns out,” she said incredulously, “I wasn’t. That’s what I’ve been trying to say that I’ve come to realize. I thought that I wanted you so much that I was willing to put on the performance of a lifetime. But apparently—”
“You really are bold and daring and hotter than a firecracker?” he asked, the hint of a smile on his lips.
“With you,” she whispered. “For you.”
This time when he went to kiss her, she was ready for him. His hand rose to the back of her head. He twisted his fingers in her hair. She felt his sexual hunger in that kiss, but she felt more. She felt his focused need.
Or at least she hoped she did.
“Do you have any idea what a turn-on that is? What a sweet gift?” he rasped against her lips a moment later.
“What?” she asked, taken aback by his intensity.
“You’re telling me that I had something to do with you finding your passion. That’s incredible. Because I’ve seen your passion. I’ve felt it. And if I had even a little bit to do with liberating it, then I must be the luckiest guy on earth.”
“Really?”
He rolled his eyes and raked his fingers through his hair. “Yeah. Really. Do you want to know what I’ve figured out in the past week?”
“What?” she mouthed.
“I’m not emotionally challenged or a commitment-phobe or permanently disabled somehow in the intimacy department.”
“You’re not?”
He shook his head. “No. That wasn’t my problem with women, Eleanor.”
Her voice box didn’t work for a second. “What was?” she finally whispered numbly.
“It was simple. I just hadn’t found the right one.”
His words echoed and swirled around her head. A strange, wonderful tingling sensation started up on every square inch of her skin as she looked into his blazing stare.
“I have now,” he said roughly, leaning into her. He nipped at her lips. “She’s really sweet, and she’s a little goofy.”
“Hey,” she protested, but he just plucked at her lips again and continued.
“She’s super smart and looks just as amazing in a miniskirt as she does in her librarian clothes. She’s fresh and beautiful and so sexy, sometimes I worry I can’t keep up with her in bed.”
“Trey,” she admonished thickly, nipping back at his lips with increasing fervor.
“You’re adorable,” he stated, leaning back and scoring her with his stare. “I’ve fallen in love with you. And do you want to know the weird thing about it?”
She froze, her mouth falling open. She couldn’t believe she was hearing this. And yet . . . at the same time, it seemed like the most natural thing in the world, like she’d been waiting for this moment her whole life.
“It wasn’t hard at all, Eleanor.” He breathed out, his gaze traveling over her face. “It seemed like the most natural thing in the world, once it hit me the other night, after we came back from the hospital. I think one of the reasons I didn’t recognize it more quickly was that we sort of started in the middle, you know? The chemistry between us was blistering, it wasn’t hard to imagine it was just about sex . . . to convince myself that was all it was, at first. But once my eyes were opened, it was so easy. So nice. At least, it was nice until you ran away from me at your parents’ house,” he added, his eyebrows slanting. “Then it kind of became a nightmare I couldn’t wake up from.”
“I’m sorry. I really am. When that happened, part of me worried my mother was right: that I was acting out some weird combination of a sibling rivalry and filling the void of Caddy’s loss at once. It was just so bizarre, thinking about you and Caddy, given everything else I was struggling with. It magnified my fears. My insecurities. I just needed to set things straight in my head before I was ready to tell you the truth.”
“What truth is that?” he asked her somberly.
“That I’ve fallen in love with you,” she whispered.
He smiled and kissed her lips softly. Eleanor felt like her heart swelled so big, it might squeeze past her rib cage.
“Are we on the same page now?” he asked her, his warm breath brushing against her mouth.
“I love you, and—”
“I love you back,” he growled.
He cupped her head with one large hand and brought her close, pressing his forehead against hers.
“Please hear me when I say this, Eleanor. Really listen. There’s no one else like you. No one else has ever made me feel like this. Thank God I found you, or else we might have kept going on in life, both of us having the most ridiculous misperceptions about who we really were,” he muttered fiercely before his mouth covered hers in a possessive, no-holds-barred kiss.
—
They stayed on that couch for hours, talking and touching, affirming their bond. Finally, Eleanor took his hand and led him to the guest bedroom. She left the light off, and they sat on the edge of the bed in the darkness. Trey wrapped her in his arms and they stared across to his building and the brilliantly lit Christmas tree he’d put up for her to see.
“The second time I ever saw you in this window, it was Christmas time,” she said softly after a comfortable silence.
“I’m not sure I want to ask what I was doing, precisely,” he said dryly.
“You were so beautiful to me, from the beginning,” she murmured, lost in her thoughts. “You were amazing to look at, but I think it was the way you moved that had me spellbound. You were so confident in your own skin, so vibrant . . . so sexy.”
He nuzzled her temple. She turned her chin up to look at him. His face looked sculpted and hard in the shadows, but the city lights gleamed warmly in his eyes. “That’s a good description of how I felt when I first saw you in the coffee house,” he said gruffly.
“Really?” she whispered.