Chapter Ten #2
She didn’t want him here and yet she felt as though she’d never wanted anything more in her life.
She didn’t want to look at him but her rebellious eyes couldn’t help but stray, and oh, how beautiful he was.
He was an assault on the senses and she could feel herself spinning back to square one.
The pain of not having him in her life was hitting her all over again, full force.
Maybe he’d come to check in on her.
He was naturally intuitive and yes, he might have sensed that after their amazing time together, there had been something cool and remote when she had said goodbye.
Maybe her unhappiness had somehow got through to him and, as the friend he had always been, he’d felt compelled to come and find out what was going on.
But with the parameters altered between them, he’d felt awkward about announcing his intention.
She didn’t care, and she hated herself for second-guessing.
‘Colin should never have told you where I was staying. It was out of order for him to give you my address.’
She walked towards the kitchen, keenly aware of Raffaele just behind her. Every nerve in her body was alert to his towering presence behind her.
‘I can make you a coffee and you can tell me why you’re here and then you can head back to London, Raffaele. Or else there’s a hotel in the village if you’d rather check in there and save yourself the trip back. My parents are out at the moment and I’d rather you weren’t around when they get back.’
‘Why?’
‘Why what?’ Stretching up to reach a mug from the cupboard, Erin spun around and looked at him with undisguised hostility. She didn’t care what he read into her expression.
In a rush, she felt a tidal wave of resentment that he had shown up here, in the very place in which she had come to take refuge. She needed to get him out of her system but right now, with him crowding her in the small, cosy kitchen, every inch of her system was lit up by him.
‘Look, Raffaele, if you’ve come to discuss some stupid work thing, then there was no need to trek all the way down here to sort it out. I did offer to stay and do a handover if that was what you wanted, but you refused.’
‘I know. I’m not here about some stupid work thing, Erin. Come. Sit. Forget the coffee. I’ll survive without it. Please.’
Erin hesitated. He looked exhausted. Haggard. She hadn’t really noticed before because she’d been too wrapped up with dealing with her own emotions.
‘I’ve been a fool’ was the first thing he said when she was seated on the chair at the pine kitchen table, facing him.
His hands were resting loosely on the table and he had spoken so softly that she’d had to strain to hear what he was saying.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I let you go.’
Raffaele looked at her and as their eyes tangled, he realised that he’d never felt more vulnerable.
He also realised that this wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way. She’d unlocked a piece of him a long time ago. He just hadn’t realised it until they’d become lovers. Then all those things he’d shared with her had, piece by piece, unlocked more and more of his frozen heart.
But still he’d refused point blank to admit it.
‘You didn’t let me go, Raffaele,’ Erin said, sounding confused. ‘I decided that I couldn’t carry on working for you because I would have found it too awkward even if we weren’t physically sharing the same space, and because I felt it was a good time to branch out. So…’
‘I’ve never shared myself with anyone the way I shared myself with you.’
‘You’ve had a million lovers.’
‘A million might be just a tiny bit of an exaggeration.’ But he half smiled and held her gaze without flinching.
‘Erin, I never shared any of myself with any of them. I took them out, wined and dined them, had fun with them but they remained strangers, even if they didn’t take a similar view.
With you…? I think I’ve been sharing bits of myself for years without paying the slightest bit of attention to it.
And then when we became lovers… I foolishly assumed that I was going to remain immune to any woman having influence over my emotions. ’
‘You’re saying…’ Erin whispered. ‘I don’t get what you’re saying.’
‘I’m saying that I fell in love with you, Erin. I never saw it coming but then, when I think about it, it came in small steps and all those small steps were invisible at the time.’
‘Fell in love…?’
‘I had so many opportunities to tell you. When you said that you were leaving, when you handed me that resignation letter, the bottom of my world dropped out. But even then I was in denial, too afraid to admit that I’d given my heart and soul to someone, that I had relinquished power over my own feelings and emotions, which was something I swore I’d never do. ’
‘I just can’t believe that you’re saying all this, Raffaele.’
‘I know. I also know that I took a chance coming here. When I saw you standing outside the office with the lawyer—’
‘You saw me…? With Colin? But when? I haven’t been back to London since coming down here.’
‘On the day you left,’ Raffaele said, flushing.
He’d never felt more exposed but now he’d started, there were no signposts showing him how to veer off down another road, not that he wanted to.
No, he wanted to share all of himself with the woman sitting opposite him, revealing nothing but on the other hand not turfing him out.
It gave him a glimmer of hope.
And then hope took wing and really began to soar when she reached forward and covered his hand with hers, then linked their fingers together.
He held those fingers tight, never wanting to let go.
‘I was jealous as hell of the man,’ he admitted gruffly.
‘And I was jealous of him at the party as well, even though I swept that aside, barely acknowledged it. It took everything inside me to be civil when I went to ask him about your whereabouts. It even occurred to me that I could have him transferred to another office—New York appealed—so that he was no longer competition on my doorstep.’
Erin smiled.
She squeezed his hand. If she could have bottled this moment forever, she would have.
‘You have no idea how tough the past week’s been for me,’ she confessed, her voice low, her heart beating fast as she strove to match his honesty with her own.
She’d spent so many years holding on to what she’d thought was a harmless crush, only for it to blossom into something far more dangerous to her peace of mind. Now she felt as though her emotions were waiting impatiently to burst their banks.
‘Tell me,’ Raffaele urged.
‘You’ve been honest with me so I’m going to be completely honest with you,’ Erin confided huskily.
‘I’ve had a crush on you for years.’ She reddened at the confession.
She half turned away from his reaction but after just a second of surprise, his face registered satisfaction that thrilled her to the core and gave her the confidence to continue.
‘Tell me more. I’m all ears.’
‘That’s more like it.’ Erin grinned and then leaned forward to kiss him delicately on the side of his mouth only to succumb to something deeper and hungrier and more demanding when he cradled the back of her neck and properly returned her kiss.
‘What do you mean?’ he murmured, drawing back but keeping his hand on her neck, holding her close.
‘The brimming-over-with-self-confidence guy I ended up finding irresistible.’
‘Nope. Don’t recognise myself in that description.’ He kissed her again, a lingering kiss that left her trembling for more. ‘Although I’m very much liking the finding-irresistible part of what you just said. I think we should explore that line in a little more depth.’
‘You’re so full of yourself.’
‘And yet you fell in love with me…’
‘Yes, I did. I just thought that it was a harmless crush, a reaction to a broken heart, a safe refuge until I got my act together and started dating again. But the weeks became months and I guess I should have stopped and asked myself why I was stuck in a routine of fantasising about you instead of getting on with finding a guy…’
‘It’s so easy to work things out in retrospect. I could say the same about myself, about the way I found myself confiding in you without wondering how it was that something I loathed doing with other women came so easy to me when I was doing it to you. Signposts ignored.’
‘Yes.’ Erin nodded. ‘And then we became lovers…and I actually thought that once you were out of my system I would be able to move on. Of course, out there, I finally accepted the truth. I’d fallen for a guy who couldn’t love… The more I learned about you, the more I realised that.’
‘I never thought I could love until I did…’
‘It’s why I handed in my resignation. I knew that was what I was going to do when I returned to London because I just couldn’t envisage being in the same building as you, even if it was a couple of floors down, without my heart breaking over and over every day.
Just knowing that you were only a heartbeat away, knowing that at some point I would bump into my replacement… it was too much…’
‘I was a fool, my darling, but I came to my senses and I’m just glad that I did, that I finally stopped letting my past to dictate my future. Although, if I’m honest, no woman had ever captivated me the way you had…so…’
‘Is there more?’
‘Much more. Or maybe not much. But the rest is very important, the rest of what I want and need to say. Erin… I can’t live without you.
’ He leaned into her and clasped her hands.
‘I want to go to sleep with you by my side and wake up with you by my side. I want to hear your laughter every day and I’m addicted to the way you don’t mind telling me what you think.
You make me a better person. Erin…’ He flushed and briefly looked away but then, when his eyes returned to her face, they were utterly serious.
‘I never thought I would hear myself say these words with love in my heart, vulnerable and not caring that I am, but will you marry me? Be my wife? Never leave me?’
‘Yes!’ She smiled tenderly at him. ‘After that wonderful prelude, my darling, I thought you’d never ask…’