Page 137 of A Soldier's Return

Close on the heels of the joy was an even bigger terror. This couldn’t be real. Hadn’t she just spent a week convincing herself of all the reasons there could never be anything between them?

“You’ll go back to California and forget all about me.”

“I don’t think so.” He brought their clasped hands to his mouth, his gaze still locked with hers. “I’m in love with you, Sage.”

She swallowed, feeling lightheaded with shock. “You’re not,” she exclaimed.

“I’ve been fighting it with everything I have. Falling in love is not what I planned in my life right now—or ever.”

He let go of her hands and stepped away from her. “My marriage was a mess, Sage. It taught me that love is complicated and confusing and...messy. I didn’t want that again. I’ve done everything I can to talk myself out of it this week, but I can’t deny it anymore. I’m in love with you, Sage. I don’t want to be, but there it is. I think I have been since you showed up on my doorstep with Chloe that first morning.”

I don’t want to be in love with you.

She heard his words as if from a long distance, but they still managed to pierce the haze of disbelief around her.

He didn’t want to love her. He had done all he could to talk himself out of it, had been fighting it with everything he had. He didn’t want to be in love, didn’t want the complications or the mess.

Panic fluttered through her and she was suddenly desperate for space to breathe, to think.

She couldn’t do this. Shecouldn’t. She had spent her childhood trying desperately to gain the attention of a man who didn’t want to love her, who had shut his emotions off abruptly when he married her stepmother, leaving Sage with nothing.

She couldn’t put herself through this again.

It was a simple matter of self-preservation. She loved him. The surety of it washed over her like the most powerful of sneaker waves.

She loved him and she knew all about how messy and painful love could be. She was terrified that she would give everything to Eben and he would destroy her.

She drew in a shaky breath and pressed a hand to her stomach, to the fear that roiled and churned there. He was watching her out of those vivid green eyes and she knew she had to say something.

Something cold and hard.

Final.

She was weak, desperate, and very much feared she had no willpower at all when it came to Eben Spencer.

“You’re not in love with me, Eben. You’re attracted to me, just as I am to you, but it’s not love. How could it be? We barely know each other. We’re far too different. We...we want different things out of life. You want to conquer the world and I want to clean it up and leave it a better place.”

“A little simplistic, don’t you think?”

She grabbed the blanket that had fallen during the heat of their embrace and wrapped it around her shoulders again, hoping he wouldn’t notice her trembling.

“Maybe it is simplistic. But look at us! You’re the CEO of a billion-dollar hotel dynasty and I’m perfectly happy here in my little world, showing kids how to tell the difference between a clingfish and a sculpin. When you think about it, you have to see we have nothing in common.”

“We can get past the few differences between us.”

“I don’twantto get past them.”

For once in her life, she desperately wished she were a better liar. She could only pray he wouldn’t look closely enough to see right through her. “I’m physically attracted to you, Eben, I can’t deny that. I’m attracted to you and I adore Chloe. But I’m... I’m not in love with you. You’re not the kind of man I want.”

She was trembling in earnest now, sick with the lie and had to pull the blanket tighter around her shoulders to hide it from him.

He gazed at her for a long moment and she forced herself to lift her chin and return his gaze, praying she could keep all trace of emotion from her features.

“Fair enough,” he finally said, his voice quiet. “I guess that’s all that really matters, isn’t it?”

A few more moments, she told herself.Keep it together just a few more moments and he’ll be gone.

“I’m sorry,” she murmured.

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