Chapter 22 #3
In time, the bedroom door opened. He turned around to see what sorts of tortures Emily might have put Sunny through.
He caught his breath in spite of himself.
Emily had found an elegant gown in a blue that was the exact color of the loch near his house on the right sort of day.
Emily had put Sunny’s hair up somehow, yet left a few stray bits curling down her neck, and finished off any hope of his having any self-control with a simple strand of opera pearls and a pair of flimsy sandals that left Sunny’s toes peeking out from under her gown.
She was so utterly charming, so gloriously herself in spite of the trappings, he could hardly catch his breath.
He looked at Emily. “You chose well.”
“It is the woman who makes the gown, n’est-ce pas?” Emily said with a smile. “Your lady is the goddess. I have only draped her as befits her beauty.”
Sunny blushed. “Enough, Emily,” she said, in her perfect French. “I appreciate the help, though I want it noted that I’m being dragged against my will to the theater. Think he’ll feed me as well, or will I have to buy my own cookies during intermission?”
Emily laughed. “I only dress him, cherie; I cannot control his manners. You call me tomorrow, oui, and let me know if he’s behaved himself.
” She kissed Sunny on both cheeks, gave Cameron a pointed look that spoke volumes about her approval of Sunshine, then left the room, pulling the door shut behind her.
Cameron held out his hand. “You look lovely. Ready to go?”
“This is crazy,” she said breathlessly.
“A discreet dinner and a darkened theater where I might hold your hand in peace seems reasonable to me,” he said with a shrug.
She hesitated, then put her hand into his. “We’ll regret it.”
He pulled her toward the door. “Sunshine, my love, I have never once regretted a single moment spent in your company. Tonight will be no different.”
She didn’t comment further, but she didn’t pull her hand away, either.
It was a start.
Several hours later, he leaned back against the door of Sunny’s hotel room and watched her come out of her bedchamber.
He was well aware that he was on borrowed time, as the saying went, and he was fully prepared to take advantage of it—when he thought he could actually bring himself to do something besides simply stand there and admire the woman in front of him.
She was lovely, true, but that wasn’t what stole his heart.
It wasn’t her grave smile, or the way she twisted her hands together as if she were nervous, or the way her bare toes still peeked out from beneath the bottom of that very expensive gown.
It was that she would have rather been sitting in jeans in front of Moraig MacLeod’s hearth, or puttering in her garden, or trying to throw him out her front door.
He knew all that because she’d muttered those things—and several more—not completely under her breath as they’d been sitting in a very exclusive French restaurant where she hadn’t been able to find prices on the menu.
He supposed, looking back on it now, that he could just as easily have taken her to a pub and a film, but he hadn’t wanted to.
Foolish or not, he’d wanted to show her that he could actually feed her and clothe her and entertain her in lavish fashion.
He’d wanted her to know that he could provide her luxuries far beyond what he would have been able to in medieval Scotland.
He was quite sure she hadn’t given a damn.
After the past two months he’d had, it had been surprisingly refreshing.
For himself, he couldn’t remember a more pleasant evening— even with the lengths he’d gone to make sure they remained mostly anonymous. And even though he’d only managed it in the dark of the theater, he realized he had never in his life enjoyed more the simple pleasure of holding a woman’s hand.
A woman he loved.
And if she wasn’t going to throw him out right away, perhaps he might dare what he hadn’t risked before. He pushed away from the door and crossed over to stand in front of her. She held out her hands.
“Don’t.”
He stopped. “In truth?”
“If you kiss me, I won’t survive it.”
“Then I’ll just hold you.” He smiled down at her. “I’ve kept my hands to myself all night under enormous duress. Surely you’ll want to reward such good behavior by a chaste embrace or two.”
She sighed and walked into his arms as if she’d done it for years. He couldn’t help but wish that had been the case. He wrapped his arms around her and closed his eyes. He wasn’t quite sure how long they stood there without speaking; all he knew was he couldn’t bring himself to let her go.
“Is something wrong?” she asked finally.
Was something wrong? He hardly knew where to begin to answer that.
He’d gone from thinking he would just ask her a few pertinent questions to thinking he could actually let her get on a plane to now wondering if he could possibly keep her near him and keep her safe.
Assuming she would even want to stay if he asked.
He had to take a deep breath. “Nay, Sunshine, nothing’s wrong.”
“Has your short-term memory gone, then?”
He laughed in spite of himself, then took her face in his hands and kissed her.
It was only as he was making serious inroads into that that he realized it was not at all how he’d planned it.
He’d wanted the first time he touched her lips to be monumental, thought-out, approached with an appropriate amount of solemnity and seriousness.
Instead, he found himself kissing her as easily as if he’d done it dozens of times before.
He couldn’t help but smile as he lifted his head just enough to look at her. “Now, this I think I remember.”
“You do not.”
“We’ll try again and I’ll see.” He slipped one hand around the back of her neck, the other around her waist, and decided that perhaps ’twas time that new memories were made.
He didn’t kiss her nearly as long as he would have liked, forced himself to do so with as much gentlemanly politeness as he could manage, and ignored the fact that while her dress was remarkably modest for an evening gown it still left too much of her exposed for his peace of mind.
And when he managed to think again, he thought he should pull away whilst he still could. He rested his forehead against hers.
“Sunny, if I don’t walk out that door now, I won’t be able to.”
“Oh, I imagine you could,” she said faintly. “You have impressive self-control.”
“Let me rephrase that. If I don’t walk out that door now, it will kill me to walk out that door later. Satisfied?”
She nodded. “Very. Go on and get out of here.”
“In a minute,” he said, pulling her close again. “Maybe two.”
It was a marginally respectable number of minutes later when he forced himself to lift his head. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he promised.
“My flight leaves at one.”
“That cuts into my time, woman. Fetch your passport number for me and I’ll change your ticket before I go to bed.”
“But—”
“Twenty-four hours, Sunshine. You agreed.”
She started to balk again, then sighed. “All right. But you have to let go of me so I can.”
He released her reluctantly and watched her dig her passport out of her bag.
He waited whilst she wrote down for him what he wanted, listened to her swear at him while he checked the numbers against her passport to make sure she hadn’t purposely given him the wrong ones, then went to gather up the clothes he’d left behind in her spare loo.
He pulled her to the door with him, kissed her once more, very softly, then looked at her.
“Be here in the morning,” he said seriously.
She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered. “We’ll regret it.”
“Did you regret tonight?”
She looked up at him, her green eyes clouded with more pain than he would have liked to see.
“It was a lovely evening.” She took a deep breath and smiled. “Thank you for it.”
She was back to those forced smiles she’d worn in Scotland. He hated that she had to resort to them, but he had no means to ease them.
Not yet.
He opened the door, walked out into the hallway, then turned to look at her. “Wait for me.”
She nodded, then shut the door in his face.
Cameron took a deep breath, then found the stairs and ran down them. He walked swiftly out of the hotel and turned to hasten up the street. He would return at dawn, before she had time to bolt again. A day spent doing things she might enjoy; what harm was there in that?
He only managed half a block, though, before the chill evening air blew a bit of sense back into his fogged brain and he realized just what the harm would be.
He didn’t want to face the truth, but he had no choice.
If he asked her to stay—if he allowed her to stay—he would be putting her in danger she hadn’t asked for and didn’t deserve.
He came to an abrupt halt. Apparently, he was doing the same thing he’d done when he pulled her back to 1375. Only this time, he knew what he would be asking of her.
He took a deep breath, then forced himself to walk on. One more day. He would memorize every look, every sigh, every touch of her hand on his and the feel of her mouth under his.
And he would hope to hell that some solution presented itself, because the mere thought of losing her was like a dirk in his heart.
He put his head down and continued on his way.