“Don’t fool yourself into believing that I can’t have you if I wanted you, Faith,” he warned, pride kicking in. “We both know that if I touched you right now you’d go up in flames.”
“You’re wrong.” But she was lying. “You’re a player who couldn’t hold on to his new toy quite as long as he’d have liked. We both know if we’d pursued this you would have grown bored before long.”
Vale shifted his jaw, reminding himself not to lose his temper, wondering why she was the only person able to push him beyond the point of reason. “I never made you promises or told you I was some great catch, but I was sincere when I told you I wanted us to continue what we’d started.”
“Your point is?” She quirked her brow at him, obviously having already lost her temper. “Shall I remind you that I left? That I understood you never made me any promises?”
“I don’t need reminding, Faith. I know you left me.” For two weeks he’d been able to think of little else. Faith had left him. He missed her. He wanted her back. Whatever the cost. “Shall I remind you that I’m the one fighting to have you back in my life?”
She stared blankly at him.
“I’m serious about the job, Faith. Sharon did tell me your plans, so perhaps you no longer want to work here.” He shrugged. “If you won’t come back to Wakefield and Fishe, I’ll come to work for you.”
She studied him with suspicious green eyes. “Why would you want to do that?”
“Have you not listened to anything I’ve said? I miss you. I want you in my life. If not as my lover, then as my friend, my co-worker. Whatever you’re willing to give me, I’ll take.”
She closed her eyes, swallowed. “Why are you doing this to me, Vale? I was here for eighteen months and you never noticed me. Why now, when I’m moving on, putting the pieces of my life together in a way I believe I can be happy about? Just leave me alone, please. I don’t want to be hurt by you and we both know we’d never work out in the long run.”
With her eyes squeezed shut, she looked so vulnerable. Part of him wanted to just step away, to let her be. But the truth was he had noticed her. Maybe he hadn’t realized just how much he’d noticed her, how much he’d come to expect to spend his days with her, but he had noticed her.
Maybe he hadn’t been willing to admit just how much he’d expected her to be a part of his life because then he would have had to examine why that was so.
The thought of losing her though had him examining all kinds of things he’d prefer not to.
“I can’t leave you alone, Faith,” he answered honestly, causing her eyes to flutter open.
“Why not?”
“Because I’m not me when you’re not here.”
Her gaze lifted to his. “Explain.”
If only he could. “Nothing works the same when you’re not with me. I don’t work the same. It’s like I get up on the wrong side of the bed and my days go downhill from there.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “What are you saying? That I’m your lucky mojo or something?”
He shook his head. “It isn’t that.”
“Then what is it?” she demanded, losing patience with him again. “Tell me why I’m here, Vale. Why you dognapped my defenseless dog.”
Defenseless, his hind end.
“I need you here, Faith. I need you with me.”
“I thought you were willing to come to work for my clinic,” she countered.
“Is that an offer?”
“No.” But he saw the wall she’d built around her crack, knew he was starting to get through to her, and that made him all the more determined to lay everything on the line, to make her see reason.
“I think about you all the time,” he admitted, chipping away at the crack, wanting to completely tear down the wall she’d built around herself. “When I wake up, when I go to sleep, all in between. I think about you.”
She took a step back, bumping against his desk. “Guilt does strange things to a person’s conscience.”
“It’s not guilt I feel for you, Faith.”
As if she couldn’t stand, she sat on the edge of his desk. “What do you feel?”