Page 24 of Ardently Yours

Charlotte

My heart pounds inmy ears.Kiss me. Kiss me. Kiss me.

Nothing about this is a good idea. If I were thinking at all, I’d step away. Instead, I stretch up on tiptoe, and my eyelids drift closed.

The warmth of one big hand clasps the nape of my neck.

Our lips meet, cool from the November breeze, then warming on contact. Arden presses, searching, and I open to welcome him in.

His tongue glides against mine, and his scent fills my lungs. A thrill ignites with something I haven’t felt in a very long time. A bubbly combination of trepidation and excitement and sexual arousal stir together in my bloodstream into a fizzing cocktail of need.

I want to sink into this kiss and take it as far as we can go.

Other than our mouths, we’re barely touching. My palms rest against the expensive fabric of his lapel. One of his hands remains wrapped around the back of my neck. The other restson my hip, squeezing me gently through the layer of denim, but there’s space between our bodies.

He draws back, then rests his forehead against mine. “Sweet Charlotte. Be very sure what you want from me. If small-town gossip bruises your heart, my world could tear you to pieces.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know.” He runs a gentle thumb over my bottom lip. “But if you crave a quiet life, I’m the last person you should be kissing.”

My throat aches. I stood here and told him I was happy with my little world. What I want doesn’t matter.

If I date again, I’ll choose someone boring. Not too interested. Not too smart. No one I’d ever obsess over, or who would want too much from me. Arden is a man who would demand everything. He would want a partner with an open heart. He’d expect trust and give it. He’s told me as much.

I’m not that person anymore. Besides, the situation with RealFreedom and the demolition proves how tenuous my situation really is. There’s no guarantee my past will stay buried.

I take a step backward. “Did I ruin our friendship?”Please say I didn’t.

Arden frowns. “We’ve ruined nothing. We’re exactly the same as we were.”

A thirty-second kiss under a theater marquee is probably no big deal to a man like him, but it’s changed everything for me.

Before he smiled and touched my face—before he laughed and put his arms around me—before Arden kissed me—my feelings were a vague, unanchored thing.

He was nothing more than words on a screen. It’s the only way I could have gotten to this place where I allowed someone like him to get close to me.

Feelings snuck up on me. Arden sucked me in, hook, line, and sinker, but I refuse to drown.

The sun drops lower in the late afternoon sky, disappearing behind the RealFreedom sign that shielded our kiss from prying eyes. Now in full shade, I shiver when the wind cuts through my poly-filled jacket.

Arden removes his cashmere scarf and wraps it around my lower face and neck, tucking it around me.

I’m the caretaker of my own life, and I can’t let him come in waving a magic wand to fix my problems and start thinking of him as my fairy godmother or my prince.

“You need to avoid lying . . . You have too many tells.”

I know where I stand with him. He isn’t a man who lets “sentiment get in the way of common sense.”

I slide the fantastic-smelling fabric beneath my chin. “I have my own scarf in the car.”

“Perfect. I’ll trade mine for yours,” he says.

“Mine is homemade. In a Tunisian stitch with acrylic yarn.”

“Even better.”

“Arden, it’s cheap.”

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