is unnecessary,” he said, lifting his chin in defiance of the wreckage all around him. “I am quite capable of looking after myself.”
“Yes,” she said soothingly. “Yes. I can clearly see—”
A terrible little giggle escaped her. She tried to stifle it by putting her fist to her lips. It didn’t work.
“I wanted the chicken like that. Blackened.”
She swallowed hard and spoke over her fist. “Of...course...you...did.” Between the words were the strangled remnants of suppressed laughter. She really had said quite enough, but she felt compelled to add, “And the desire to cook...muffins came from?”
“Men,” he informed her proudly, “are extremely suggestible animals, particularly when it comes to food. I wanted a muffin, I saw no reason I should not make one for myself.”
“A statement of independence,” she said.
He looked annoyed at her deduction.
Laughter. It had become, until a few weeks ago, as foreign to her as a forgotten language. Her life had been so strained. She had lived with the extreme tension of feeling hunted and not safe. All that had changed. Her laughter died when she realized that Jefferson was not in any way, shape or form sharing her enjoyment. In fact, Jefferson Stone looked downright grim.
“I wasn’t laughing at you,” she said, contrite. “It’s just that it feels so good to be here. And so right.”
Jefferson frowned at that. In case she mistook his silence as an invitation to exchange confidences, he looked long and hard at her, and then gave his head a shake. “I can’t see how this is possibly going to work,” he muttered.
“We could give it a free trial,” she suggested softly.
“I already told you. I don’t need you.”
“If you decide it’s not what you want, I’ll refund your misery.”
“I told you,” he said, “I don’t need you.”
“What if it’s not about need, Jefferson? What if it’s not about what either of us needs?”
He didn’t say anything.
“What if it’s about want? About wanting a different kind of life, not needing it?”
He looked unimpressed. How he reminded her of the man who had first stood in his doorway, arms folded over his chest, his one word—nope—hanging between them.
She hadn’t let his attitude stop her then, and she wasn’t going to let it stop her now. Just like then, it felt as if her life depended on changing that nope to something else. “Can I tell you what I see?”
“Please don’t,” he said, his voice hard and cold.
She smiled, because she had already seen beyond that mask. She had already seen the strength and the decency that were at his very core.
“I see a man,” she said quietly and firmly, “who despite his dizzying career and financial success, lives with an abject sense of failure. I see a man who viewed himself as helpless when it counted the most, when he most wanted to be powerful.
“I see a man who has suffered way too much loss, and all that loss has left him feeling guarded about love, unwilling to risk such terrifying powerlessness and loss again.
“I see a man who doesn’t need love but who wants it desperately. And yet he’ll say no to that—to rediscovering the richness of his emotional life, to learning to laugh again—because the risk of pain seems like too great a risk.”
“It is. Too. Great. A. Risk. And I don’t want to talk to you about risks. How could you have done that? Put yourself in the path of that psychopath?”
“I had to.”
“But why?”
“Because I was like the Cowardly Lion, I had to find my courage.”
He snorted.
“Because there is no love without courage. To choose love? Even though it has wounded you? That is the greatest courage of all.”
Angie heard the firmness in her voice, the new strength of a woman who had found the courage to face down her own fears—all of them. “It’s the only risk worth taking. The tremendous payoff is worth the risk. The payoff is love.”
* * *
When Angie had laughed he had known the gig was up. The minute he had let her in that door, all those weeks ago, he had opened up a whole world of danger to himself.
Her laughter had shown him, all too clearly, who she really was.
And who she really was? Vivacious and fun, alight with life. Smart. Capable. And now this added element: pure, unadulterated courage. What could be more dangerous to his shut-down world than someone like her who was willing to grow and change, to let life teach her all its lessons, both easy and hard? What could be more threatening to the comforting darkness he had come to live in, than her promise of light?
Still, he tried. He cleared his throat.
“Let’s look at the facts,” he said.
She wrinkled her nose at him. He hated it that she did that. It made her look so adorably cute.
He cleared his throat. She had been back in his house less than three minutes and he was already reacting to her.
“That moment of madness when I decided I was capable of making muffins?”
“You totally miss me,” she said.
He scowled at her. “It is the result of your intrusion on my world, influencing me, filling me with a desire to prove things that did not need proving a mere month ago!”
He had thought, when she had first arrived, that it was only for two weeks. That was all. He’d been clear about that. A man could handle anything for two short weeks.
She moved toward him. He had plenty of opportunity to move away. Plenty. But he did not.
She came and stood before him. Everything she was, was before him. It was in her eyes, sparkling with unshed tears, and in her posture and in her exquisitely beautiful but tentative smile. She was courage and she was delicacy. She was strength and she was tenderness. She was tears and she was laughter.
She was offering him a world that would go from black-and-white to full color; she was offering him a world that would go from bleak to glorious. All of that was in her as she reached out her hand and cupped his jawline, her fingers stretching out to touch his cheekbones.
He froze. He could feel the utter tenderness of her touch. In her shining eyes was love and acceptance. He understood every man dreams of such a thing, without knowing that it was his greatest longing.
Jefferson Stone’s strength completely failed him, crumbled like rock from an ancient wall.
Or
