seem like a sad picture to me.’
‘To me either. A year ago, six months even, I couldn’t have looked at it without breaking down. But now it makes me smile. Elena would have loved it.’ He shifted a little, working at the tension across his shoulders. ‘This … The dreams aren’t for Ellie to know about, though. They’re something different.’
‘How?’
All he’d wanted these past few days had been for her to challenge him, help him break free of the shackles that were stopping him from doing what all his instincts clamoured for. He’d asked her to be honest with him, speak plainly, and she had. But it wasn’t enough.
‘I don’t want to go there, Jenna.’
He felt her shrink away from him. ‘I’m sorry. Fools rush in …’
He was suddenly so sick of this. Sick of the complex dance they’d been doing, never getting too close but unable to keep their distance. ‘Angels don’t fear anything.’
‘I wish I could take a leaf out of their book.’
Maybe he should too. Act as if he was on the side of the angels. Pretend that what he’d told her already was all there was to it, and that there wasn’t another part of him that had been irrevocably broken that day on the road.
‘Perhaps they should take one from yours.’
She laughed quietly into the moonlight, shaking her head. ‘I don’t think so somehow.’
Something whispered against his arm, feather soft. The wings of a moth, maybe, or one of the butterflies from her garden, out on a late-night spree. Or maybe it had been a lock of her hair.
‘You underestimate yourself. You can teach them a thing or two.’ He dipped in a little closer and found that her lips were already there. Euphoria swamped the voice of reason. It would just be one kiss. A man didn’t have to fall in love, risk everything again, just for one kiss.
If she’d have stayed still, quiet, maybe he could have resisted her. But he felt her fingers on his jaw, skimming across the night’s stubble. Then she whispered his name, and ripped every last thread of his resolve to tatters.
His hands found her waist and she slid onto his lap. He kissed her, heat banking and flaring in his chest until his head began to swim.
‘Mmm. That was foolish.’ Her lips brushed warmly against his, full of the promise of what he hadn’t yet tasted.
‘Very.’ If the first kiss could be explained away as a heat-of-the-moment thing, the second trashed that particular excuse. They both knew exactly what they were doing. Her gaze locked with his and he was lost, drowning in the deep blue waters of her eyes. Adam poured everything he had, everything he was into the kiss, letting the long, slow beat of their passion take him.
Finally, he let his lips slip from hers and he held her gently to his chest, not caring that she could surely hear the urgent pumping of his heart. She was silent for a long time and when she did speak her voice was almost a whisper. ‘Adam, I …’
He rested his cheek against her hair. ‘I know. The most foolish things can be the sweetest.’
She laughed quietly and he was glad that he had pleased her. ‘Got a little carried away, I guess.’
She knew it wasn’t only that just as well as he did. But Adam already cared about her too much to short-change her by taking this any further. ‘Yes. Something about a hot summer night. Jenna, I’m sorry if …’
‘It’s okay. I know.’ She hung her head, moving to get up off his lap, but he pulled her down. He may not be able to take this any further, but he wouldn’t have her believe what she so obviously seemed to think.
‘When I kissed you, Jenna, it was you that I wanted. Just you.’
She gnawed at her lip uncertainly, seeming to be unable to take that fact in. Reality was closing back in on both of them, wrenching them apart, but he couldn’t let her go without knowing that these last moments had been special. He dropped a kiss onto the end of his finger, pressing it against her lips, and felt them curve in a smile.
‘I suppose I’d better go. Before either of us starts anything we can’t finish.’ She didn’t move from his lap.
‘That would be best.’ He’d committed himself once to a woman. But that was when he had believed in love without loss. And he had a ready-made excuse not to take this any further. ‘I’m only here for a month and then I have to leave.’
‘I know.’ She seemed almost relieved, as if that had settled some conflict that was going on in her head. A flash of mischief crossed her face. ‘Great kiss, though.’
‘Yeah. One of the best.’ The best, as far as he could remember, but saying that would only get him into more trouble than he was already in.
Wordlessly she jumped to her feet, almost running past him and up the steps of the fire escape. Seconds later the click of the door catch above him told him that she had gone straight inside.
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