“It doesn’t matter.” Faint color slashed his high-boned cheeks.
She didn’t know whether to laugh or feel insulted. “Not knowing my name doesn’t matter?”
“No.” Before she could protest, he drawled, “Because I can always call you ‘mine,’ can’t I?”
Gosh. Gosh, oh gosh.
Silver eyes gleamed down at her with a mix of amusement and possessiveness. “And you’re mine...aren’t you?”
Lane’s first instinct was to throw her arms wide open and shout to the world, ‘Yes.’ Oh, how she would love to belong to him.
But she remembered the people who loved her, who painstakingly helped piece her back together again, and she knew she just couldn’t say ‘yes’ to him just like that, knew she owed it to her family to value herself a little more.
“If you want me to be yours, then why did you stand me up?”
Josh squeaked behind her.
When Angelo didn’t answer, she continued, “Why did it seem like you were avoiding me?” She knew he might think she was mad, but she wasn’t. She just wanted him to prove to her that her faith in him wasn’t misplaced.
“Why, Angelo? Why didn’t you even try talking to me again? And why,” she asked haltingly, and this was the most painful of all, “would someone so terribly old-fashioned like you be suddenly so touchy-feely with that model?”
“I can answer all that.”
His tone was flat, and yet she could sense there was a ‘but’—-
“But first...”
She was right.
“I’m going to kill that boy for daring to lie—-” He released her and took a dangerous step towards...
“I’m sorry,” Josh yelled even as he backed away and kept himself out of reach from the other man. Oh, shit, Angelo Valencia made him want to piss in fear.
Lane had turned around to look at him, asking, “What’s he saying, Josh?”
He paled. He wanted to lie, unable to bear what Lane would think if she found out what he had done. But then he took a look at the other man’s face—-
Josh gulped. Heartbreak was better than being six feet under.
“He’s saying I lied to him,” Josh said dully, “and he’s right.”
ANGELO WATCHED LANE finally stop waving as the bus carrying the convenience store boy sped away. He remembered the pitiful, forlorn look on the boy’s face as he stared at his Lane from his window seat, and Angelo had the rare urge to do something as childish as roll his eyes.
The boy was lucky, he thought grimly, Angelo had allowed him to leave town without blacking both his eyes out.
Beside him, Lane bent to pick up her bag from the ground and he automatically murmured, “Let me carry that for you.” As he took the bag, he said quietly, “You know he’s in love with you, right?”
Lane cringed at the question. “I wish I had known sooner,” she admitted. Because now, everything that used to puzzle her about Josh was finally making sense, and she couldn’t help feeling guilty at how dense she had been.
“I saw you kiss him,” Angelo said abruptly. He knew he was being pretty callous about it, but he simply wanted to get it over with.
Her eyes flew to him in horror. “You did?” She shook her head hastily. “I mean, you saw him try to—-”
“Don’t lie,” he snapped.
“But I’m not lying,” she protested. “I had something in my eye, and he was laughing because I was being such a baby about it. He told me to close my eyes, then somehow he lost his balance—-oh.” She paled. “He was trying to kiss me, wasn’t he?”
Angelo was torn between wanting to have his security go after the convenience store boy...and shaking the girl in front of him until maybe all her screws were in their proper places.
He said tensely, “Be honest with me, tesoro. I am no boy you need to lie to. Did he kiss you?”
She looked straight into his eyes. “No. He didn’t get to kiss me.”
Relief flooded him.
“I’ve never been kissed at all actually.”
Angelo sucked his breath. “Dio, tesoro.” Did she have to tell him that...now? Did she not realize how her words made Angelo literally ache to teach her all about kissing?
Lane started chewing on her lip, her anxiety evident.
“What is it?”
“Maybe I got it wrong. Maybe he really did lose his balance—-”
“Are you kidding?” he exclaimed incredulously. “It’s the oldest trick in the book, tesoro! He was a coward, si? He did not have the guts to let you know of his feelings and so he tried to do that, so he would not be rejected.”
“I guess, but—-”
“You guess?” He had a greater urge to shake her now.
“It’s just so weird. I’m not the kind of person that guys have secret crushes on, you know what I mean?”
No, he didn’t, but clearly she was not being coy. She truly was that naïve about men.
“May I ask you a question?” He strove to sound polite.