She made a sound of frustration. “We’re family! Maybe not by blood,” she added when he started to speak, “but my connection with Brynn has brought me into the family and I don’t want to lose that.”
“Of course not. And there’s no way your relationship with them will ever change. They’re all very fond of you.”
She leveled a chiding look at him. “Let’s be realistic here. You’re a member of the family. They’ve known you most of your life. I’m an old friend of your cousin, who has only been around for a little more than a year. If an unpleasant situation develops between us, I’m the one who’ll have to stay away so the others won’t be uncomfortable. You’ve seen what happened with Cameron and Amber, how awkward everyone acted around them the other night. How long do you think it will be before one or the other disappears from the group entirely? I don’t want to end up in that position with your family.”
“It’s not going to happen that way.”
“Does that mean this is never going to happen again?” She waved a hand to generally indicate everything that had gone on between them that evening. “We can go back now to the way it was between us before?”
Shane hesitated, then slowly shook his head. “I don’t think that’s going to happen, either.”
Frowning, she looked at him warily. “What do you mean?”
“I can’t go back,” he answered simply. “I can’t see you as a pal or a cousin anymore. Every time I look at you now, I find myself thinking about how beautiful you are. When I touch you, even by accident, I can’t stop myself from wanting to touch you again. And I can’t stop wanting to kiss you. Wanting more. I don’t know when everything changed. Maybe I’ve felt this way from the beginning and I just couldn’t pretend anymore. But I can’t go back.”
She gulped. “So what are you suggesting?”
“The way I see it, we have two options. We can stay away from each other—make an effort not to be alone together again, at least for the foreseeable future...or we can find out exactly where this leads.”
Stay away from each other? The thought of not seeing Shane punched a hole in her heart. He had become so much a part of her life that his absence would leave an emptiness she wasn’t sure she would ever be able to fill. That painful realization made her all the more aware of how very much was at stake with her reply. “How can we...find out where it leads?” she asked, using his words.
“I, er, don’t know, exactly.” He sounded uncharacteristically uncertain. “Maybe we could—you know—go on a date or something?”
“A date?” she repeated, twisting her fingers in her lap so tightly that her arms ached.
“Yeah. Maybe a movie. We’ve seen lots of movies together.”
But they had never considered their outings “dates,” she thought. Before, they had been two friends who simply enjoyed spending time together. Now, they would be going out as...what? Potential lovers? That possibility made her toes curl in her shoes. “I don’t...”
“If you aren’t interested, I’ll understand,” he assured her. “You won’t have to worry about my bothering you. I won’t kiss you again, either, if you ask me now to stop. Whatever happens, I don’t ever want you to be afraid of me, Kelly.”
She wasn’t afraid of Shane. But she was utterly terrified of the way she felt when he kissed her. So what she should do was politely decline his offer and make an effort to hold him at a safe distance from now on, even if that meant never being alone with him again.
But what she said was, “I suppose we could go to a movie or something—on one condition.”
“What condition?”
“No one else can know it’s a date,” she said firmly. “As far as anyone else will know, we’ll just be a couple of friends hanging out together for an evening.”
He frowned. “Isn’t that what a date is?”
“You know the difference,” she chided. “I don’t want anyone to know anything has changed between us—not our friends or our family. That way, if we discover that this is all a big mistake—which I’m sure we will—we can put it all behind us without anyone else being the wiser.”
“You mean you want to date secretly?”
She nodded. “At least for now.”
He thought about it a moment, then nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yeah. It’s no one else’s business, anyway, right?”
“Er...right.”
“So, you want to call it a night, or should we head for your bedroom and find out where that leads?” he asked cheerfully.
Kelly choked and then glared at him when she realized he was teasing her. “That wasn’t funny.”