“I can’t…”
He silenced her frantic panic with a soft, slow kiss, giving her something else to focus on. And for a few precious seconds, he could pretend they were two people with no ugly past.
He broke this kiss and touched his nose to hers. “Hear me out, okay?
She nodded. “Okay. I’m sorry. I just freaked out.”
“I get it. But let’s make some decisions right here, right now.”
She nodded. He rolled to the side, and she sat up beside him. They paused to pull down the comforter and climb under. Which meant she wasn’t running.
“I take it you want to be here. You just are worried about the complications I bring to your life.”
She bit down on her lush bottom lip. “Here’s the thing. You might not realize this, but I don’t have a lot of friends. What I have is my sister, who gave up most of her life to fix my messes. And that means I also have Kade and, by extension, the guys at Blink and their wives.”
She drew a deep breath before continuing. “Now I’m not saying I don’t want or intend to carve out my own place in life, but it would kill me to hurt the people who stood by me.”
He couldn’t argue with that. But he was just selfish enough to not want to let her go without seeing what could develop between them. He had a hunch she wanted the same thing or he wouldn’t be so insistent now.
“Don’t they want you to be happy?”
“Of course they do. They just won’t think you’re the one to make me that way. And up until a few days ago, neither did I.”
He took that, accepted it, because he’d earned those feelings. “How about this. You give us time to explore what this”—he gestured between them—“is. For all we know, it’ll fizzle out.”
He doubted it.
But he went with it anyway. Anything to keep her calm. “Maybe you won’t like my bad habits.” Not that he intended to have any while he was convincing her they belonged together.
To his relief, her breathing had evened out. She was calmer.
“So what do you say?” His goal was to bind them close, so they could face her sister and his one-time friend together.
“I can do that,” she murmured.
He let out a long breath, relieved he didn’t have to fight her, too.
* * *
Kendall arrived at work Monday morning to find daisies in a vase on her desk. She looked around for Josie, but she was obviously in the back with the dogs, so Kendall put her bag on the desk and searched for a card on the flowers. She found a small envelope taped to the back of the glass container.
She pulled out the paper and read the note. “Pretty flowers for my pretty girl. Julian.” A warm fluttering took up residence in her stomach. This wasn’t the same man she’d known. At least, she didn’t think so.
He was attentive in a way he hadn’t been before, and so much more caring. She felt awful for freaking out on him after the first time they’d had sex and, worse, for admitting she was afraid of the family conflict that would ensue if Kade and Lexie found out she was seeing him.
But it was her life, and she had to make her own choices and figure things out on her own. And she wanted to see where things with Julian could go.
She grabbed her phone and texted Julian. Thank you for the flowers. XO She bit the inside of her cheek and backspaced over the XO. Not yet.
Two seconds later, his answer came. My pleasure. Thinking of you while busy in boring conference calls.
She smiled and put the phone aside. She tucked the card into her handbag and settled in at her desk, getting lost in paperwork for a while before Josie came back.
They talked for a bit, then Josie made phone calls and Kendall returned to the never-ending forms and filing the job entailed.
Her iPhone rang, and she glanced down to see Lexie’s name on the screen. She picked it up on the first ring. “Hi,” she said to her twin.
“Hi yourself. How are you?”