by Tawny Weber
“I thought your career was your whole life,” she protested. “Even when you were pretending it was investments, the rest was true. I could tell. It’s been everything, shaped everything, that’s made you who you are.”
He nodded. Then he lifted one of her hands to his lips and brushed a soft kiss over her knuckle.
“That’s true. It was my whole life. But that was before.”
“Before?”
“Before you. Before us.” He lifted the other hand, kissing it, then held them both to his chest. “I’ve finally found something worth living for, Maya. Something worth coming home to, worth hoping for and planning a future around.”
She couldn’t breathe. Was he saying what it sounded like? A part of her wanted to jump up and down. Another part of her wanted to run from the room before he could finish.
Refusing to look like a chicken, barely able to hear through the blood roaring in her ears, Maya waited.
“Us,” he said.
Oh, wow. He’d said the magic word. Everything in her life just took on a shiny glow; the word us had sprinkled a glitter of joy over her entire existence.
And oh, God, she was turning into a sap. Maya pressed her lips together, trying to stop the tears that had filled her eyes from spilling over. No way she was going to blubber through something this important.
“Us? Like us for play? Or us for keeps?” She watched his face carefully, looking for signs of desperation or fear. Or even hesitation. But he looked happy. Thrilled, even. Like this was something he really, really wanted.
Like she was someone he really, really wanted.
Forever.
“I want to give us a chance at forever,” he said quietly, his mouth brushing over the knuckles of one hand, then the other. “I want to see what it’s like when we’re both on the same page. Both of us being ourselves, you know.”
“Ourselves?”
“I’m in love with you, Maya. But I know you. If we don’t spend some time as ourselves, being totally honest and not pretending, you might start doubting this. Thinking we’re not solid. I think we need to give it time. I want you to be sure of me. Of us.”
He cleared his throat.
“But before you decide anything, you need to know that I’m sorry. I can give you a million excuses as to why I lied, why I used you. But they don’t matter. What matters is that I hurt you. And no excuse in the world justifies that.”
Maya pulled back a little, her eyes rounding in shock. He really did know her. That last, tiny bit of worry that’d been lurking in the back of her head disappeared.
She wrapped her hands tighter around the back of his neck and pulled Simon’s head down for a kiss.
“I’m in love with you, too,” she said softly, smiling up at the most beautiful eyes she’d ever seen. “And I think time is a great idea. That way I have longer to prove to you how I feel.”
“To say nothing of time to have plenty of hot, wild sex,” he said with a grin.
“Oh, yeah,” she breathed with a huge sigh, more content and happy than she’d ever thought possible. “We should get started on that right now.”
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ISBN: 9781459219182
Copyright © 2012 by Tawny Weber
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