applies to dinner.”
She shook her head. “It’s not healthy to live like that.” The doorbell rang and he went to answer it. “The people in Tibet don’t eat takeout and they live a very long life,” she said, refusing to let up, “subsisting on yogurt and vegetables.”
He laughed shortly. “It’s not a long life, it only seems like a long life because they can’t find a decent steak.”
This time, it was the delivery boy with his pizza. Kullen handed him the money, then took possession of the extra-large pizza. He turned around and closed the door with his back.
“I ordered pizza with everything,” he told her, carrying it back to the dining room on the other side of the family room. “You see something you don’t like, just take it off.”
She tried not to think what a loaded phrase that actually was. “What if I don’t like anything on it?” Lilli posed.
Kullen never missed a beat. “More for me.” He set the box down on the dining room table. “But I seem to remember that pizza was your weakness.”
No, you were my weakness, she thought. But that Lilli had to disappear a long time ago.
Kullen opened the box and the aroma, already leaching out of the box by any means possible, now robustly filled the air, arousing her dormant taste buds.
“It does smell good,” she conceded.
“Help yourself,” he said, gesturing toward the oil-soaked box. “I’ll get the plates and napkins.”
“I’ll get them,” she offered. It was the least she could do. “Just tell me where the kitchen is.”
“You can’t miss it. It’s the only room with a refrigerator in it,” he deadpanned. And then, when she kept on looking at him, he pointed over to the area just beyond the living room.
“Wise guy.”
A sense of déjà vu washed over him as he watched Lilli disappear around the corner. It brought with it a host of warm, soft memories that in turn aroused feelings that had long since slipped into exile.
Don’t go there, don’t go there, he warned himself.
But he knew that was easier said than done. He’d already crossed the line once. And each time it would get easier.
And all the more difficult to come back.
Chapter Six
They were doing justice to the pizza. Kullen had a hunch that they would. It was almost like old times.
Almost.
It would be easy, so seductively easy, to let his guard drop. To allow that feeling to overtake him, the one that had whispered that this was like old times—the times when he had struggled so hard to create and win. And finally had.
He had fallen for her the very first moment he’d ever laid eyes on her. The first time he’d glimpsed her face with its regal, aristocratic lines and felt his stomach muscles tighten into a knot so hard, he could scarcely breathe. There was no question in his mind that Lilli McCall was easily the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen.
But back then, his “pre-shallow period” as Kate referred to it, it had taken more than just looks, no matter how incredible, to captivate him. What had drawn him in was the sadness in her eyes. It made him ache for her and want to erase her pain. He had launched a full-scale, albeit subtle campaign to get to know her, to get close to her, a feat his best friend at the time, Gil Davis, had warned him was doomed to failure. Gil had had his finger on the pulse of the campus social circles and he’d said that Lilli McCall was a loner, a serious, self-contained fortress. Word was that no one really got close to her.
It was a challenge Kullen couldn’t refuse.
And the more he’d worked at getting closer, the more he’d found his own defenses going down. In the space of a few days Lilli had stopped being a challenge and had begun being someone he just wanted to help. Someone he was determined to get to trust him. They’d had several classes together and had been in the same study group. The latter had turned out to be his first triumph with her.
“C’mon,” he’d urged her cheerfully and relentlessly. “Law school’s tough. This is a communal effort to help us all survive. What one of us doesn’t know, maybe someone else does. It’s a give-and-take situation.” It had been his eyes that had held her, he’d later discovered, not any physical touch of the hand, something that she’d avoided religiously then. “You can’t deny us the benefit of your brain, can you?” he remembered coaxing.
When she’d finally, somewhat reluctantly agreed to study with him, he had wanted to shout his victory from the rooftops, but prudently refrained, pretending to take it all in stride.
That had been the real beginning. The beginning of what in time had turned out to be an all-too-short relationship that had, on the outside, held such promise.
He could still remember the first time he’d made her smile, the first time he’d heard the sound of her laughter.
And the first time she hadn’t stiffened when he’d kissed her.
There was no way to measure the intensity of the feelings he’d had for her. Feelings he would have bet his life were returned. In the short time they were together, he’d bared his soul to her and caught just the tiniest glimpses of hers. It had by no means been a balanced exchange, but that was okay. With Lilli things were different, all the rules were thrown out and new ones had taken their place. He was fine with taking the tiny, baby steps. As long as they eventually led to his goal.
He’d been so sure, so very sure that they would.
Which was why his entire world had fallen apart when she had disappeared from his life.
At first, he’d thought that Lilli had been kidnapped. He was incredibly, stupidly certain that the woman he loved above everything else on earth wouldn’t have just taken off on him. Especially not after he’d proposed to her.
But she had.
Lilli had just disappeared, leaving a note on his desk. The note had fallen on the floor between the wastepaper basket and his desk. He hadn’t found it until, lost in a frenzy of frustration and helpless anger, he’d kicked the wastepaper basket aside. Falling over, it had spilled its contents, but it was then that he’d seen the small white note card with two words in her handwriting. Two words that twisted a knife right into his chest.
“I’m sorry.” That was all she’d written. Just, “I’m sorry.” And that was supposed to explain her departure and compel him to go on living his life. A life that no longer contained her.
Sitting opposite Lilli now in his dining room, a room he rarely used except when he needed to spread out a massive collection of legal papers, it all came back to him with the force of a detonating bomb. Everything he’d felt, everything he’d gone through with her and then, without her. The good, the bad and, finally, the anger. He’d been a fool because he’d loved her and would have done anything for her. She hadn’t cared enough to explain things face-to-face.
But now, after all
