He nodded. “Sons and daughters should not have to pay for their father’s sins.”
“But they often do.”
His arm was tight and hard beneath her touch, and his hand atop hers squeezed gently. “I’ve given you a bit of my past, now I demand a bit of yours.”
She nodded. “Do your worst.”
“Do you hate your grandfather?”
She inhaled sharply. “My. That is bad indeed. But easy to answer. No, I do not.”
“Why? He left you here over and over again. Alone. And in his death, he left you not with family, whoever secured his title, but with this remote house.”
“Loneliness does not kill.”
“Not a man like me, made for the state, but someone like you?” He pulled her tight to his side, and for a breath the scent of coffee and soap, the scent of him, became her air. He lifted her hand from his arm and rubbed it between his palms. “Your hands are cold. Here.” He slipped her hand into his pocket. “You said, earlier, that you’ve considered marriage. To a specific individual?” He kept his tone light, but the words seemed hard stones between his teeth.
She swept them away and out to sea. There was a matter of greater concern to deal with. “You are not made for loneliness, Andrew.”
“I am. I’ve no need of others.”
“Says the man who rushed here when he thought I’d run away forever.”
“An anomaly of an action. You should not expect such behavior from me ever again. It was foolish. I feared for the future of my agency. But… it’s worth it.” A repetition of a sentence he’d said moments ago.
And the same questions echoed once more between her ears. What was worth it? Did he mean her? Was she worth the rampaging emotion that had brought him here?
“Drew, why me?”
He stopped short, glared at her. “What do you mean?”
“You could take any of the women working for your agency and train them up. I could train them for you, make sure they meet your exacting standards, and they could take my place. You do not need me. Yet here you are, languishing in a castle in the middle of nowhere. Because ofme. I am not the only capable woman in the world.”
She released his arm, the touch too much to bear as she said the words that could convince him to walk down the road and never return. The wind whipped up colder. The warm day done. Likely no more until spring. She felt a bit like that herself, all winter inside.
He turned to the ocean, still as stone. Not even the sea breeze ruffled him.
“It is not just that you are capable,” he finally said. “You are… an extension of my very being. Necessary and?—”
“No!” She should delight in his words, but she hated them. Silly, contradictory creature she was. But she did not want to be required as a hammer is required to build a house. She wanted to be loved for the frivolity of it. She wanted to be necessary despite not being useful at all. She wanted a man to delight in her presence not because she smiled and complied and helpedease his life. She wanted to be an inconvenient but unignorable diversion. And still be loved for it.
She backed away from him, shoulders straightening. “I am not a limb, not your arm or leg or even some physical manifestation ofyoursoul. I amme.” She beat a fist against her chest. “I am a free woman, free by circumstance and will, and if I give you any bit of myself, it is not as clay to fashion as you will, but so I can stand beside you. An equal.”
For every step she backed away from him, he followed, his longer strides cutting easily across the distance she created. “You are! You are equal—no, superior—to any woman I’ve ever met. You terrify me, Amelia, because—” He snapped his teeth together, tearing the sentence in two. “After I left the house of my first employment, I put all vulnerabilities behind me. Softer emotions, trust. Trust always leads to ruin. The moment you allow someone to dictate your happiness, your well-being… I will allow no one—friend or family—to have such control over me. I haven’t since then. Yet you… you don’t even ask for it. Trust. Emotion. Not truly. And yet you draw it from me like a bad tooth.” He reached for her, and his fingers almost grazed her neck, the black leather cold. Unlike the skin of his hand beneath? She wished she knew. But he dropped his hand. “I will not put myself at the mercy of others again.”
“You will live forever shut off, then? Because you think it safer? I cannot”—she licked her lips, unable to ignore his stark beauty on a day such as this, wild and worn and promising the passions of a storm—“tempt you into the light?” She reached for him, her fingers, gloveless, finding the stubbled skin of his jaw, rubbing her thumb along its edge. A harsh rasp that made her body tighten. Such a tiny touch.
But not tiny at all.
He caught her hand and tugged her until her body slammed against him. His gaze dropped to her lips and his head dipped.She saw in his eyes that the day of his arrival had been no anomaly, no mistake. He’d wanted it then. He wanted it, her, a kiss, now.
She parted her lips, leaning into his hard embrace, waiting.
For a kiss that never came. That oh-so-familiar wall shut down over his eyes, and he released her, let the embrace of the cutting wind take his place.
Before Theo’s wedding, Drew could not remember a single time he had touched Amelia. Now he hoarded the moments, piling up quickly, like glittering gemstones he shoved out of sight so no one else could see. He didn’t want people to know, he didn’t wantherto know, that he had a weakness, a desire, that sometimes felt as if it would overwhelm all other ambition in his body.
He wanted to touch her, to gather more gems to hoard. They sat like hot coals in his belly, aching to burn higher, brighter, become a conflagration. And what if he gave in? What if he did what those coals wanted him to do and let himself burn for her, pulled her into the fire and consumed her? Could he turn it off once it had begun? Could he douse those flames and live as ice again? He’d had to. That had been a shutting off, a going inward. A necessity. He’d done well this last week, proving he could do as she wished yet maintain his distance, too.
