“Hmm, a little.”
In an easy gesture, he looped his arm around her shoulders. Immediately she felt warmer, his touch rekindling a long-banked fire within her.
To casual passersby they’d appear to be a couple out taking their dog for an early-evening walk. Except Jay’s dark glasses were neither a fashion statement nor an effort to shade his eyes. He couldn’t see her, didn’t know she’d changed from the woman he’d seen on television as well as the girl he remembered from high school. That she was now ugly, a woman few men would want to have on their arm.
If she didn’t tell him that unpleasant truth, she was an impostor, a fake who didn’t deserve to be in the same room with a man as courageous as Jay.
She stopped on the sidewalk. “There’s something I have to tell you.”
“Oh, damn, don’t tell me Buttons has gotten us lost.”
“No, we’re on the right track. It’s just that…”
“I knew it. I couldn’t be that lucky. You’ve already got a boyfriend.”
“No, not that either.” She smiled, the movement of her lips tugging on the scar tissue that marred her face, and instinctively she ducked her head. “After the earthquake, the doctors did everything they could to rebuild the left side of my face. It didn’t heal right. It probably never will.”
Frowning, he gazed at her with unseeing eyes. “What are you trying to tell me?”
“I’m ugly, Jay. That side of my face is—”
He let go of the dog’s leash and framed her face between his big, gentle hands. The scarf was in his way, so he carefully slid it back and then with his fingertips traced every bit of her face. Her eyebrows, the shape of her nose. The cheekbone that had been shattered and the one that was whole. His fingertips skimmed across her lips, following the outline and sketching the seam. With infinite care, he measured the shape of her jaw. And the dreadful, jagged scar.
Kim stood immobile. Afraid to breathe. Afraid of the revulsion she might see in his expression, hear in his voice. Her heart thudded painfully with that fear; a surge of adrenaline urged her to flee, to shut herself away again in total isolation. But her body could only respond to Jay’s tender touch, thick ribbons of heat fluttering through her.
“Kimberly Lydell, you listen to me and you listen real good.” His rich baritone vibrated with conviction. “Even when my vision is twenty-twenty again, you’ll still be the most beautiful woman in the world to me. That’s how I’ll always see you.”
Tears escaped to edge down her cheeks. She wanted to thank him but she didn’t have the words to express the depth of feeling that filled her chest and tightened in her throat.
Her ego had been shattered along with her cheek, and whether it made her seem shallow or not, she’d needed to hear a man say she was beautiful—a man she cared about—even if his words were a lie.
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