Page 115 of The Au Pair Affair

She’d brought it to Costa Rica to use as a pillow?

Had she... been using it thewhole timethey’d been apart?

Burgess swallowed thickly, unable to speak for a solid ten seconds, his throat working and working until it was sore. With relief. Arousal. Appreciation. Shock.

Tallulah followed his line of sight, the color deepening on her cheeks. “It’s the biggest sweatshirt I own. Obviously, it makes the, um... most ideal pillow.”

With his dark mood evaporated, Burgess decided to let Tallulah get away with that bullshit. The sweatshirt meant something. It had to. And so he found a deep down reserve of patience and drew on it with everything he had. “How wouldyoulike the day to go, instead, Tallulah?” He struggled against the urge to tuck a piece of stray hair behind her ear, his fingers twitching near the outside of his thigh. “Tell me—and I’ll make it happen.”

Her shoulder rose and fell on a breath, and he could sense her relief that he hadn’t pursued a conversation about his sweatshirt being spotted in her bed. Little did she know he’d be thinking about it nonstop all day. “I don’t need protection anymore,” she said finally. “I’m more... steady now. On my own.”

“I’ll say.” He tilted his head to study her. “A hot air balloon ride and everything.”

Tallulah blinked, lips parting. “You know about that?”

Burgess nodded once. “Just because you haven’t seen me doesn’t mean I haven’t been checking in. Constantly. At this point, I’ve offered to buy Chloe nine new harps and the entire skincare section at Sephora.”

She sniffed, rolled a shoulder. “I suppose you think what you said to me, in the hospital... I suppose you think that’s what gave me that final push to start trying new things without a bodyguard. Maybe it was. Or maybe I was just ready, but...”She stopped for a breath. “Calling my family for the first time in years? Hearing their voices? That was all me.”

A bolt turned in his jugular. “You called them.”

“Yes.” Tallulah snuck a look up at him, just a small one, but it was such a powerful glance, because she let him see, albeit briefly, how much that phone call had meant to her. She generously let him share in the relief, and God, he’d never experienced more thankfulness in his life. She’d opened up to him about her family, the postcards, and he’d thrown it in her face. Yet with one flick of her eyes, she’d let him know their past moments together still stood. They hadn’t been erased by his callousness. Not completely.

That didn’t mean the present wasn’t still a giant fucking question mark.

“You’re so fucking brave, Tallulah.” His chest was being sucked inward toward his spine. Gratitude rained down on him, just to be given the chance to say these things to her out loud and have her listen, whether he deserved to be heard or not. “I was dead wrong to imply the postcards meant you aren’t brave or capable. I was the one being a coward that day.”

Without realizing it, Burgess had moved closer, positioning them both in the doorframe, her back pressed to one side, his to the other. He propped a forearm over her head and leaned down, taking a serious chance by rolling their foreheads together, letting her feel the release of breath from his lungs against her lips and hope, hope like hell she knew every ounce of it was for her.

“Burgess . . .”

“Yeah.”

“You didn’t finish last night,” she said on a laughing exhale. “It makes me feel like I didn’t, either.”

He wrestled back a groan. “You did. The way you shook—”

“Are you really just trying to make me cave in again?” she interrupted. “If so, that’s fully evil.”

“I’m not going to lie, I hope you’ll want me again. But mostly...”

When the truth dawned on him, it was so unexpected, he couldn’t get the words out.

Tallulah searched his expression with a line between her brows. “What?”

The back of his neck heated. “I guess, uh... I couldn’t let myself go with you, Tallulah, when your heart wasn’t in it. I don’t... I’ve never been that weak for or with anyone, the way I am with you. It would have hurt to be weak while you were... resisting feeling anything and everything for me. Jesus, I don’t even know if that makes fucking sense.”

For just a beat, she appeared stricken. “It does,” she whispered, tilting her face up.

Bringing their mouths a hairsbreadth apart.

Burgess’s heart started pounding so loudly in his chest they both heard it. Guests probably heard their mangled palpitations from the other side of the resort. Was she going to kiss him? Without him initiating?God, please let it be happening.Let his rambling explanation of why he couldn’t get off last night mean something coherent to her.

His body moved on instinct, pressing her up against the door and she moaned, her hips tilting forward against his, and that was all the encouragement he needed to dip his mouth to her neck and suck a pathway up to her ear, his right hand sliding down the back of her jean shorts. If he got her onto that bed with her legs open, with his balled-up sweatshirt in plain view, nothing was going to stop him from coming this time—

“There you are!”

A familiar voice, belonging to Carlos, shattered the moment like a baseball through a pane of glass. Tallulah lurched back so suddenly, she hit her head on the doorframe and Burgess’s stomach dropped through the floorboards. His right palm wascradling the back of her skull before he knew his own intentions. “Oh, gorgeous,” he murmured, scrutinizing her face for signs of pain. “You okay?”

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