“I’d like to give you more colours, all the colours there are, if you’ll let me.”
She opened her eyes. There was a whole half circle seat between them, a thousand reasons why they were a bad choice for each other, a thousand more to walk away now, when they were a half-formed notion with little more than frenzied kisses and a fish to bind them. But he sat, steady, when he might have twitched to separate, offering her a bright new spectrum of life.
“How do I do that, Georgia?”
“You guys all right?”
She blinked at Angus. His eyes switched from her to Damon. He took in the cold coffee, ignored cake.
Damon answered. “We’re good.”
“Dame?” Angus frowned at him, then fixed Georgia with a look that said everything she needed to know about how important Damon was to him and what he’d do to protect the man.
Damon moved a hand, held it out to her and she took it, their arms stretched full-length in the space between them. “We’re good,” he said again.
Angus rubbed a hand over his eyes, pulled a key from his pocket. He slid it across the table towards Damon. “Lock up when you’re done. Turn the rest of the lights off. Shove the key under the door.” He collected the crockery and went back towards the kitchen, calling, “Don’t forget the alarm.”
The minute he was out of sight, Georgia shifted around the curve of the bench to Damon’s side. He exhaled hard and gathered her close. She had to stop herself crawling in his lap.
“Will you wear the dress? Will you let me hold you, dance with you, be with you, light and dark, pale and vibrant, whatever colour you feel like being?”
She pressed her lips together hard, flattening them to stop a sob from rising. He was entirely the wrong man for her at entirely the wrong time and everything she wanted. “You still want to do that?”
He was a comfort blanketing her troubles, smothering them out. “So much.”
She gave herself over to the strength of him, the heady scent of him, part citrus, part sweat. A lone tear tripped off her lower eyelid and fell on her shirt. “After everything I’ve told you about my disability.”
“It’s not a disability in my eyes.”
She looked up into his face, the sight-impaired eyes that saw so much. “You weren’t supposed to happen.”
He pushed his fingers through her hair and anchored her. “But I have and you haven’t chased me off.”
“I’m not going to be easy.” A benign sounding warning, so everyday against the ripped from the news headline history she’d just given him. His cheek against the side of her face. He’d feel her tears.
He put his lips against the wetness. “Neither am I.”
But he was too easy to be with. “It’s been too long since someone was interested in me. I’m falling for you, Damon, and it’s way too soon.”
He drew back, the gentlest smiles. “Yeah it is, but I’ll take it, because I’m falling for you too.”
She bracketed his face in her hands. If she embraced him she was stepping up to a new life, less alone, less lonely. He couldn’t glue her fragments together, but if he was willing to love her just a little, for just a while, she might have enough confidence to ram them back together herself.
She pressed dry lips to his, but before either of them could make it a proper kiss, she said, “I’m keeping the dress.”
15: Naked
Holy fuck. It was possible she wasn’t wearing underwear. Damon ran his hand from Georgia’s shoulder to her hip and all he felt was slippery silk. No ridges, no bumps, no edges. She was wearing the grey dress all right, but all he could think about was what she wasn’t wearing.
Her hands were pressed flat on his chest. “You look amazing.”
He cleared his throat, clogged with too many thoughts of ditching the awards night and getting inside that invisible zip. “You feel amazing.”
“It’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever worn. I feel like a Disney Princess.”
He shook his head. His thoughts more pornographic than Mickey Mouse Club. If they didn’t leave her doorstep now, Georgia might not get the full princess effect of the hire car, the red carpet and the night of stars no one outside the recording industry had ever heard of.