A fact that was represented in James' home. With ten bedrooms, views over the city, an indoor and outdoor pool, acres of space in the yard, a gym, and who knew what else, this house belonged on an episode of Cribs.
“Like it?” James asked, breaking into her thoughts.
“I’m amazed,” she confessed as he held out a chair for her at the dining table. There looked to be a veritable feast laid before her, and she couldn’t wait to dive in.
With Mark out of the picture for good and currently waiting on bail to be released after his arrest, as well as the peace she’d found now she accepted her feelings for James, her appetite was returning.
Undoubtedly, the bun in the oven was helping with that too, but in this instance, it was the feast that was making her stomach grumble. Platters of Greek salad with bulging olives and juicy feta cheese, large pots of mezze with taramasalata, roast lamb, grilled eggplant and roasted peppers. There were some kind of meatballs, and huge doughy clouds of squashy pita-like bread.
He laughed at her bright eyes. “You look ready to tuck in.”
“Only politeness is holding me back,” she replied, not even joking as she grinned at him.
“Go on then,” he invited. “Do you want wine?”
She hesitated. “No. Thanks. I’ll just have water or juice if you have some.”
His brows rose. “Juice?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay,” he replied, sounding confused. “What kind?”
“Orange or apple. Whichever.” She reached for some bread and tore off a piece. Moaning as she tried it, she tasted the dark burnt bits where it had touched the griddle, the soupcon of savory olive oil, and then the sharp saltiness of rock crystals that had been dusted over it. “Wow, this tastes good!” she complimented, before she rolled the bread around a piece of feta, some grilled eggplant, topped it with roast lamb, and dipping it into some taramasalata she’d spooned onto her plate.
He laughed again at the sight of her stuffing her face. It pleased her how much she amused him. Sometimes, it irritated the hell out of her, but mostly, it didn’t. Mostly, she liked it.
He wasn’t a somber businessman, but the man had responsibilities. Major ones. He was jovial with most people, but she felt like that was a kind of front. The steel in his eyes was almost always there, but when she was around, it softened. Crystalline hazel eyes turning into soft grassy pools whenever he looked at her, like he knew he could relax around her.
Like James knew he could trust her to keep this side of him safe from danger.
And he could.
Even when she almost hated him for making her feel something for him, he’d never been in any ‘danger’ from her. Well, she’d have decked him with no guilt at all, but that was a different kind of danger. She’d only have done that if he’d pissed her off—which he had a habit of doing. Damn him.
Smirking at him because her thoughts amused her, she took another bite of her concoction, then after she’d swallowed, said, “Thanks,” as he passed her a glass of chilled juice. “In fact, thank you for all this. Your housekeeper didn’t have to go to all this trouble.”
James let out a falsetto gasp, and pressed a hand to his chest. “I’m offended that you think I didn’t spend all day slaving over a hot stove.”
She snorted. “I may not be as clever as Aidan, but I wasn’t born yesterday.”
As he slipped into the chair opposite her, he shot her a dirty look. “I’ll have you know I helped with the lamb, and that Greek salad.”
“Helped how?” she teased. “You stood there and watched her work?”
Hannah had known Mrs. Talbot for as long as she’d known James, really. The housekeeper had worked for him even when he’d been back at college, because yes, billionaire students had staff, and her fortunate brother, who’d moved in with James after living with him in a dorm room for a year, had taken full advantage of having a housekeeper around.
Barely refraining from rolling her eyes at him, she watched him screw up his nose in a way that made her want to grab hold of his chin, keep him in place so she could kiss the pants off him.
Jeez, now she’d let go and was embracing the crazy way he made her feel, she had to admit she was eager to get her lips on his. In any way she could.
“Well, sort of. I carved the lamb,” he confessed. “That’s work, isn’t it?”
Grinning, she shook her head. “You’re a doofus sometimes.”
He winked. “That’s why you love me.”
His words, so playful and meant warmly, had her hand freezing on its way up to stuff her face with another delicious bite. The statement had her throat closing, and she had no choice but to glance away, to hide her expression from him. Though the remark had been said in jest, the words scorched her because they were the truth. A truth she couldn’t admit to him yet, not without knowing how he felt about her. As well as what his reaction would be to her news about the baby.
Would he believe her when she told him the child was his? She knew he’d have questions about how it happened. Heck, she had them herself. How could the pill fail just that one, single time when it had never failed before?
Sure, she’d not slept with Mark that often at the end, but the pill had never let her down before.
She wouldn’t blame him for not believing her, but she prayed, with every ounce of her, that he would have faith in her, in her word. It was so beyond important to her that she felt tears prick her eyes.
Why had this happened?
But even as the wail of a thought floated around her head, she pressed a hand to her belly to comfort the child that was barely more than an orange seed. She couldn’t regret this particular miracle, she just wished it had happened under more secure circumstances.
Circumstances where the orange seed’s father didn’t question how he was becoming a dad.
Hannah’s mind was spinning.
“Hannah?” James asked, apparently spotting the change in her demeanor. “What is it? Is there something wrong?”
She gulped, and with a shaky hand, put the bread back on her plate. Reaching for her glass, she swallowed down some juice then whispered brightly, “Nothing.”
Damn, she was such a chicken!
Why hadn’t she said something then? Now was as good a time as any to spill the beans, because she had to tell him the truth about the baby before they went anywhere. And she knew somewhere was on the cards because James had been the one to invite her here. That meant he wanted more too, but would that still be the case when he knew she came as a ‘buy one get one’ deal?
He studied her a second, then so casually she felt like her heart was about to explode from sheer surprise, he told her, “I love you too, you know. If that’s why you look like you’re about to puke all over the dining table.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” she rasped, glowering at him. “Don’t say things you don’t mean.”
He glowered back at her, leaning into the table as though he could lean into her personal space. “What is it with you? Why do you have to take everything I do as a damn challenge, Hannah? I mean it, dammit. And you totally ruined the fucking moment. Why have you got to be in my face on every shitting thing,” he said on a growl, then shook his head. At himself, she thought, too stunned even to defend herself. “Why the fuck do I love you even though you don’t trust me, don’t seem to like me most of the time, and can spend weeks ignoring me while I’m suffering the torment of the damned trying to figure out what the fuck is going on between us.”
“I had a lot on my mind,” she managed to choke out.
“What? And I didn’t?” he snarled, slamming his hand against the table.
It was then that she recognized the difference between Mark and James. Had Mark done that, she’d have jumped, eyed him warily, and done her best to try to calm the situation down. Had she always known there was a knife’s edge she had to be careful of? That he was capable of more than she could handle?
With James, she wasn’t sca
red. If anything, she was surprised. He was usually jocular with her, lighthearted. For him to display even an ounce of anger was so rare that she had to take him at his word.
He… loved her.
How had that happened?
How had she failed to see that in his behavior around her?
Emotion gathered in her throat. “I was processing something you can’t even begin to imagine,” she confessed softly. “That’s why I was staying out of your way. I was freaked out, and you couldn’t help. You’d only have made it worse.”
“Why couldn’t I? Why would I have made it worse? Damn it, Hannah, 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, Hannah. 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 bungee 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, Hannah?” 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?”
Hannah 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, Hannah 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, Hannah?”
“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.
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?”
Her eyes flared wide, bemused by the bluntness of that question.
“I’m not going to be mad,” James coaxed softly, sensing her distress. “Or upset. I just want to know so that we can work on that, because I think this is the issue here. You don’t trust me.”
“I-I do,” she countered softly, her fingers fiddling with the napkin on her lap.
“Actions speak louder than words,” he said, almost as a whisper.
She shook her head at his sad tone, and, digging deep, knew what the real reason behind her hesitation was. She had his love, his declaration to feed her, to give her enough strength to admit, “I don’t trust myself.”
Once the words were out there, she let loose a long breath. It was cleansing and purifying, and she needed that. Needed the clarity of the moment to feed her, to help her explain why she’d fortified herself against him when he’d never done anything to hurt her.
“Why not?” he asked quietly, and she knew her answer hurt him even though that was the last thing she’d intended. “Why don’t you trust yourself, baby?”
“We have known each other so long, and I think I’ve loved you from afar without even realizing it since we met.” She grimaced, hating how pathetic that sounded when, in her head, it was everything. “I know that sounds fanciful but my response to you has always been out of sync. I consider myself relatively laidback in my personal life but with you…”
“You always leap down my throat.”
She pulled a face, but couldn’t deny it. He was right.
“I’ve never been like that with anyone else,” she continued. “Ever. Because I’ve never needed to. I always try to get reactions out of you…” Hannah pondered the truth of that, as she recognized that the Labor Day kiss had started because she’d been pushing him—egging him on to tipping her mother in the pool. When he’d told her he wouldn’t, she’d continued to nag like she was some stupid eighteen-year-old. In the end, shutting her up had been as simple as kissing her until North was South and left was right.
She blew out another breath, this one shaky as hell as she admitted, “I find myself doing extreme things when we’re together. When I was younger, that scared me, and
as I grew older, it made me wary and distrustful. When you and Aidan moved back here after college, I-I…”
“Go on,” he prompted her gently.
“I think that’s why I chose Florida for my college.” She blurted that out like she was confessing to murder, and though it wasn’t so heinous, it was to her. “How many other decisions have I made because of you? How can I trust myself when I’ve done so much stupid stuff to avoid you?”
He blinked, then as he processed her words, his mouth dropped open before he bit off, “You went all that way away just to stop being around me?”
“You’ve always driven me crazy, James,” she whispered, hating that she kept on hurting him.
She continued, “I-I never thought you could reciprocate my feelings. Why would you? I’m bland old Hannah Sawyer. Not exciting. Not even gorgeous. What could you possibly see in me?”
James gawked at her.
“You don’t look in the mirror often, do you? You’re fucking beautiful, Hannah.” He grunted. “Shit, that came out wrong. Look, Hannah, we can work on this. You were young when we met. Really young, and if what you feel is as crazy intense as what I feel, then you were definitely too young to handle something like that. What do we do when we’re overwhelmed? We run. But now, it’s time to stop running. Unless, it’s to run into my arms, baby.”
Her lips twitched. “One admission of love doesn’t mean you can start writing for Hallmark cards.”
James grinned, then boasted, “Anything I put my mind to, I can do.”
“Big head,” she chided, but there was no heat to her statement. She let out a sigh. “Do you really think we can make this work?”
“I know we can.”
His confidence, his faith in her, had her whispering, “I have something I need to tell you.”
“Something else?”
She nodded. “It’s important.”
James’ grin began to fade at that. “Why don’t I think I’m going to like what you have to say?”
“Maybe because I’m not sure if you will either?” She hunched a shoulder. “I didn’t sleep with Mark for about three months before we split up.”
One Kiss: A Brother's Best Friend Romance Page 10