he’s gone, won’t I love that? whined the sad little voice in her head. Every time she looked at the tree she would have to remember this last perfect day, the beautiful time they’d had choosing it and decorating it together.
Uh-uh. Forget the tree. Bad idea. Better just to stay in bed late, make love a lot and go somewhere nice for dinner. And then make love for half the night. That would be a perfect goodbye.
Goodbye. The word seemed to bounce around, echoing, inside her head. Her heart was racing. Her cheeks felt too warm.
She dragged herself up against the pillows and made herself take slow, deep breaths.
She was being an idiot and she was stopping that right now.
Big mistake to start planning out the day. They didn’t need a plan. It would be lovely whatever they did.
Her breathing evened out and her pulse stopped galloping. There. She was fine. She wasn’t going to break down in front of Dami just because she was beginning to realize she wanted more from him than she’d told him she wanted.
A whole lot more.
You need to talk to him, Tabby had said.
But she wasn’t going to talk to him. It wasn’t fair to put all this emotional crap on him. He hadn’t bargained for anything like this.
And neither had she, damn it. Neither had she.
Breathe. Slowly. Deeply.
It worked. Her tight throat loosened. The pressure behind her eyes eased. The heat in her cheeks cooled. It was fine. She was fine.
There would be no big scene. She was under control.
And then she looked over and there he was in the doorway, his eyes low and lazy, his mouth made for kissing, wearing a black silk robe exactly like the one he’d worn on Thanksgiving morning when she’d knocked on his door to ask him to teach her about sex. He carried a footed tray with a carafe of steaming coffee, a covered dish of something wonderful and a crystal bud vase with a sprig of mistletoe sticking out of it.
All her deep breathing came to nothing. “Oh, Dami...” She burst into tears.
Should he have known this would happen?
Of course he damn well should have.
In fact, to be brutally honest, he had known it would come to this. Exactly this. And he’d gone ahead and done what he wanted to do anyway.
Damien stood in the doorway, holding the tray with the breakfast she would probably never eat, and cursed himself for being a heartless, lust-driven dog. He shouldn’t have come here. He never should have let this thing with them get started in the first place.
She was his friend, dear to him. She deserved so much—everything.
Instead he’d had to go and become her lover when he knew himself and knew how it would end: just like this. With her suffering and him hating himself.
He set down the tray and went to her. “Luce, my darling...”
She had her head in her hands. Her slim shoulders were shaking. He reached for her and she sagged against him with a lost little sob.
He gathered her closer, stroked her soft hair. “Shh...” He knew the words to say, the gentle reassurances. “It’s all right. Don’t cry. Everything will work out....”
“Oh, no.” A gasp, another sob. “I don’t think so.” He felt the warmth of her tears against his throat.
He cradled her face, tipped it up to him, wiped at her tears with his thumbs. Her eyes glittered, wet. Yearning. Her mouth trembled and he wanted to kiss her, to taste the salt and the wet, to pull the covers away and make love to her again.
One more time. Before he left.
He didn’t do what he wanted. For once.
Her eyes sought something in his face. He doubted she found it. She said, “Dami, I’ve been lying. Lying to you. Lying to me. I thought I could do it. Could just keep on lying until after you’d gone.”
He did kiss her then. But he kept the kiss chaste, though her mouth trembled, willing, beneath his.
When he lifted his head, he saw she was on to him. “Kisses can’t keep me from saying it,” she whispered.
“Luce...” It was a warning. And a plea.
She said it anyway. “I love you, Dami. I’m in love with you.”
There. She’d gone and done it. Said the three words that couldn’t be unsaid. The ones that always made him feel restless, eager to be gone.
And she wasn’t finished. “I think I’ve been in love with you since that first night I met you, when you danced with me and treated me with such complete consideration. You talked to me, really talked to me, and you listened, like you really were interested in me and what I had to say, as though I was more than some sickly, scarred-up, skinny girl. Like I was a grown woman, beautiful and whole and strong and well.”
“That was exactly how I saw you.”
Through her tears, she gave him a certain look. Knowing. Patient. “As a grown woman? Hardly. You saw me as a child, Dami. You might even have loved me, too—as a friend, I mean. Or at least felt affection for me right from the first. I knew that you did. I felt that you liked me. I knew you noticed me. And you were kind to treat me as a grown woman when you knew how I longed to be thought of as a fully functioning adult. But you didn’t see me as a woman. Not then. Don’t try to tell me that you did.”
He gave it up. “All right. As a child. I thought of you as childlike. And I adored you from the first.”
“Okay,” she said halfheartedly. “I’ll buy that.” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. He grabbed the box of tissues from the nightstand and offered it. She took it, pulled one out, dropped the box on the bed. “You liked me and I loved you. I just didn’t realize the way that I loved you.”
“Luce. It doesn’t matter.”
“But I’ve been dishonest, in my heart.”
He shook his head. “I don’t care.”
She gasped. “But I...I used our friendship to get you to make love with me.”
“Yes, you did. I knew that from the first. You did nothing wrong.”
Her soft mouth twisted. “Why don’t you get it?”
“But, Luce, I do get it.”
“Uh-uh. No. All along I’ve been telling myself that it was just for Thanksgiving, just for these past few days, just for a little while, for experience so I could get some guy like Brandon to look twice at me. I’ve been telling myself that I didn’t want anything permanent, that I only wanted a few lessons in love
