Chapter 19
NOLAN
The rest of the evening passed with us enjoying the good food, good wine, and playful banter.
Tonight in the cabin was the first night I allowed myself to fully relax.
Being with Val was becoming as necessary as breathing.
I needed her grounding presence, her ability to pull off my mask, her ability to see the good in everything—even in impossible situations and people. Even in me.
But the night had to end. And the cabin wasn’t real life.
Real life barged into our pleasant evening when hours later, Val glanced outside.
“Shit,” she said, scrambling off the couch and throwing open the front door, a gust of frigid air whooshing in. We were both still in our cashmere robes and the cold wind bit through me.
“What’s wrong?” If she was swearing, it had to be bad.
“Shit!” she said again, slamming the door on the blizzard blustering outside. “The snow must have gotten worse while we were talking. There has to be feet of it out there. We’ll never make it down the mountain in that.”
“Damn,” I said, going to the window to check it out. She was right—it was a whiteout. The resort car had four-wheel drive but the road would be treacherous in that amount of snow. “Looks like we’re snowed in for the night.”
I couldn’t find it in myself to be too upset about that.
“I should change,” Val said, as if suddenly aware of her state of undress, tying the robe tighter while I followed her into the bedroom suite to grab my suit—the only other clothes I had.
But once inside, Val looked at the singular bed like it might sprout seven heads and bite her.
“I’ll sleep on the couch,” I offered. “You take the bed.”
“You’re too tall for the couch,” she said to the pile of pillows.
“I’ll be fine.”
Her tawny eyes snapped to mine and her hand twisted in her curls as she shivered—whether from the cold or at the prospect of spending the night with me, I wasn’t sure.
“A gourmet picnic basket, a hot tub, and a cozy cabin for the night with only one bed? This is starting to feel like a real date, Nolan.” Her voice was too breathy to pass for the jest she’d intended. “But that’s impossible, right?”
Instead of brushing off the comment with a joke of my own, I took her hand, bringing her fingers to my lips. Now or never. “It’s my turn to tell a secret. I owe you one.”
VAL
Thrown off-kilter by the entire evening, my brain short-circuited. We had traded one secret each, but I didn’t object. “What is it?” I asked, feeling as though I were standing on a ledge, waiting, waiting…
Nolan drew back an inch, his hand resting against my neck, thumbing my necklace with a conflicted expression. Infinite seconds passed and I thought he was going to say forget it, then he finally spoke, the words pulled out of him as if by some outside force.
“The engagement between Cressida and I—it’s not real.”
My heart didn’t just leap hurdles in my chest, it did freaking cartwheels. “What?” I cursed the wing of hope swooping in my stomach. So Frankie was right. Holy shit.
“We are engaged. We will get married. But we’re not in love. It’s an arranged marriage—our families are threatening to disown us.”
An arranged marriage? Every moment I’d shared with Nolan rushed through my mind, his confession casting the slideshow of our time together—tonight—in a much different light.
Maybe…maybe he did feel something for me even if he couldn’t show it in the way he wanted to. “Why didn’t you say anything sooner?”
“Because I didn’t want to drag you into my issues,” he said with a stricken expression.
“But it’s been tearing me apart. Cressida and I can have other lovers, but there’s a shit ton of hoops to jump through.
It’s not something I would want to subject anyone to, so I’ve only been with Cressida.
And even that is purely out of seeking the only kind of comfort I’m able to without bringing the tabloids down on our heads. No one can ever know the truth.”
I frowned, searching his face. “But you told me.”
“I did,” he replied, tucking a stray curl behind my ear with a tenderness that made my chest ache. “You’re the only one who knows outside of our parents and Arthur.”
Thunderstruck, I could only gape as I searched for the right words.
The hard muscles of his shoulders tensed as he awaited my reaction, his cheek flickering.
His engagement isn’t real. He and Cressida aren’t in love.
I’d known something was up, but arranged marriage was not on my list of possibilities.
Relief coursed through me, knowing I wasn’t breaking any moral codes for harboring a massive crush on my engaged boss.
But an empty sadness flowed in its wake.
I yearned to siphon off even an ounce of the isolation he must feel.
I knew what it was like to live in a private hell no one else could understand.
When I placed a hand on his chest, his eyes snapped to mine.
“That sounds terribly lonely. For both of you.”
“It hasn’t been so lonely lately,” he said, a rough edge to his voice.
A fluttery feeling rioted inside me. I didn’t—couldn’t—think about what he meant by that. “Your secret is safe with me,” I said.
A slight smile grazed his lips. “I know it is.”
And what the hell am I supposed to do with all of this?
What does it mean for us? Is there the possibility of an “us” now?
It was all too much to process. I’d gotten some answers, but too many questions rushed through my mind.
I managed to grasp onto one—the one question that had been pounding at the walls of my heart.
It was stupid and embarrassing, but I wanted to know.
“If this were a real date, would you have kissed me?”
With an intense expression, he walked into me until my back bumped against the bedroom wall.
As my breasts brushed the front of his chest with each inhale, a wave of shivers went all the way to my toes.
“If this were a real date, I’d have kissed you, long and slow.
” Leaning in, he drew his nose up the side of my neck in a scorching caress.
He stopped at my ear, his deep voice rumbling through me.
“Then, with your permission, I’d have grabbed that pert ass of yours, lifted you on the dresser, and licked that sweet pussy until you shattered. ”
I gripped his robe for dear life as stars danced in my vision.
His smirk turned rakish as he saw the yes, please I knew was plastered across my face.
“Oh,” I said. An extensive vocabulary of millions of words in two languages, and all I had was oh?
After the whole evening, I was thoroughly riled up, but this comment threatened to send me over the edge.
And now I was expected to spend the entire night alone with him in the most romantic freaking place I’d ever set foot in?
Dear god. This is all too much.
“Don’t start something we can’t finish, Val.
Remember your rule?” His voice came out husky, the heat from his body like a furnace blistering against my skin.
I should walk away from this—he was right.
Things would get so complicated if—if something happened between us tonight.
I could feel the panic wavering at the edges of my awareness.
But his growing arousal bumped against my navel and a surge of desire for him to take me and take me now pulsed through me.
“Isn’t it enough to know what I’ll be thinking about when I’m on the couch by myself tonight? ”
“What if it’s not enough?” I said in a small voice. What was I saying? It must be the wine talking. Liquid courage. All I knew was that being snowed in with a suddenly available Nolan was a recipe for scrambled brains.
He clicked his tongue, eyes tracing a path across my lips.
“That mouth is going to get us in trouble.” Despite his reminder about my rule, I thought he might lower his head to eliminate the space between us…
Oh god, I’m not ready for this. Then his eyes, dark and heady, locked to mine, as if he’d made some kind of decision.
“You can have the first shower,” he said, stepping back into the living room. “I’ll wait out here.”
I must have looked more shell-shocked than I’d thought for him to offer that instead of pulling me into his arms and doing all of the filthy, delicious things he’d promised. A pang of disappointment went through me, followed by a swell of gratitude. I needed a moment to get my shit together.
When I stepped into the shower a few minutes later, my core throbbing with need, those filthy, delicious words invaded my mind until all I could think about was Nolan.
And I wondered if he felt as tormented as me.
NOLAN
When the bedroom door closed behind Val, I deflated onto the couch.
I wanted her. Badly. But it wasn’t that simple. Revealing another secret to Val had taken a weight off my shoulders, but I still had a duty to Cressida. What a huge fucking mess I’ve made. But I didn’t regret any of it.
After my confession, Val’s face had wiped blank, and I knew she was drowning in an internal monologue of recalculating everything she’d ever thought about me.
I’d give her time, and then we’d talk in the morning.
If she was even interested in talking to me anymore.
At the very least, it was time to hash things out and figure out where we stood. Maybe this is too much for her.
From the bedroom, my phone rang. Shit. Must have left it on the dresser when I was changing earlier. The shower was still running, so I ducked inside to grab it.
“Nolan?” Val’s small voice behind me. I turned, phone call forgotten.
Steam poured out of the bathroom door and only her head poked out, her wet hair dripping on the floor.
“I, ah, left my clothes out here by mistake.” She worried at her lower lip, and I wanted to charge across the room and bite into that lip, swallow her gasps, lose myself in her taste. “Could you…turn around?”