Page 54 of Emergency Engagement
Incredibly, instead of slapping his face, she blinked fast, as if fighting tears. “It’s the most unexpected offer I’ve received all week.”
“Yeah, well”—he started to roll off her—“it needed to be said.”
She tightened her hold on him. “This needs to be said, too.” Soft lips quivered into a fragile ghost of his favorite smile. “I love you.”
Those three little words should have scared the shit out of him, but they didn’t. The only scary part was the strength of his urge to say them back to her, but those self-protective instincts he’d paid too dear a price to learn tamped it down with a ruthlesswarning.
Don’t.
Loving her put him on a slippery slope right back into the rabbit hole, and he refused to risk a second visit. Even knowing this, a greedy impulse filled him, to accept what she offered no matter how unfair of him so long as it convinced her to stick around. Some vestige of conscience forced him to be up-front.
“Savannah, I-I’m honored.”
Any hint of a smile disappeared from her face.
Honored? She’s not the Nobel Prize nominating committee, for Christ’s sake. Don’t tell her you’re honored.
“Delete that. What I should have said is—hell—you have to know I feel more for you than I planned to feel for anyone, ever again, but I have limits. They exist. I can’t pretend they don’t, and I can’t change them. Not even for you. I can’t give you pledges and a bunch of promises about a future I know damn well I don’t control. I’m not that guy.”
Can’t. Can’t. Can’t. That’s all she’s hearing. All you’re giving her. Whatcanyoudo?
“I don’t make promises I’m not one hundred percent sure I can keep. That said, I promise you this: if you take me on, I’m yours—all there is of me—for as long as you’ll have me.”
Okay. There. That’s something.
“I’m not asking for promises. I didn’t tell you I loved you to challenge your limits, or coerce something out of you you’re not prepared to give.” Her soft lips brushed over his, calming him, dammit, when he ought to be throwing himself at her feet. “Consider it a gift.”
“Best gift I’ve received all week,” he assured her, striving to lighten the mood. The corner of her mouth lifted. Then, before he could censor his inner asshole, he added, “Does that mean you’ll stay?”
Her smile wobbled. “I think we both ambushed each other justnow, Beau. Why don’t we give ourselves some time to recover, and see how we feel once we’re not camped out in your parents’ basement?”
“I know how I feel, Savannah. I know what I want.”
“Well, you’re a step ahead of me, Beauregard. I know how I feel, but I don’t know what I want.”
Chapter Eighteen
“So we agreed to hold off on any decisions until after this visit. As if a few more days will suddenly give me clarity,” Savannah added under her breath. She dumped another scoop of red, white, and green candies into a cut-glass bowl serving as a centerpiece. Was this the third or fourth scoop? She couldn’t remember.
“Could ‘I care about you, let’s live together’ be enough for you?” Sinclair added a toss of holiday glitter over the tablecloth, and they moved on to the next table. The Daughters of Magnolia Grove Christmas Eve Dinner Decoration Committee expected a certain level of productivity from its volunteers, and the stink-eye the committee chairwoman sent them suggested they needed to pick up the pace.
When the chairwoman’s gaze wandered to the ladies draping boughs of greenery along the tops of the large windows gracing the banquet room at the historic Oglethorpe Inn, Savannah dropped her scoop into her candy bag and plopped down in a chair. Her stomach had been trying to turn itself inside out all morning, her energy level hovered around zero, and Sinclair had asked her the question she’d been asking herself nonstop since yesterday afternoon. She still didn’t have an answer.
“I don’t know. All I know right now is, fate’s got a sick sense of humor. I wanted to find Mr. Right so badly I talked myself into believing that Mitch’s easy I-love-yous meant something. But when I finally stumble into the real thing, I fall for a manwho’s afraid to love. He’s convinced he’s got limits, and frankly, hewantslimits. ‘I care for you, let’s live together’ may be as far out on the emotional limb as he’s ever willing to go.”
“Beau may not be able to say the words, but he makes you happy. And you make him happy. I see it, and I’m looking with very clear eyes. Since I’ve known you all my life, I know you wouldn’t be happy in an emotionally vacant relationship.”
“It’s true. Despite all the walls he’s erected, he’s not emotionally vacant. He cares all over the place—about his parents, his coworkers…a hurt little boy in a restaurant.”
“And you. Not just because he said so. A guy doesn’t rush to the bathroom to hold your hair back when you’re puking unless he’s in deep.”
“Yeah.” She ran her hands through her hair, tugging hard on her scalp. “He cares about me.”
“Some people don’t put a lot of stock in words. They’re cautious about emotions. Life’s taught them to protect themselves. It doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings, even if they fight embracing them. Spending your time with a smart, sexy-as-sin, fundamentally decent man who cares for you sounds pretty ideal.” She popped a candy in her mouth. “Who needs all the trappings?”
Trappings. Interesting term. “Trappings like marriage? Kids?”
Sinclair shrugged. “You could slip those in the ‘never say never’ file for now, right? People change. Wants evolve. You both might feel different in six months or a year.”
