He smirked, and she knew how clearly he saw her. ‘Because you like to be in control. Because someone took that from you once, and now you guard it with your life. Because you think that any man who shows you attention is only interested in one thing.’
She nodded, amazed that hearing those words coming from him could make her smile.
‘Do you think I’m right?’
He stared at her longer than was comfortable. ‘I think you have every reason to want to protect yourself.’
‘But?’ she prompted.
‘But I think I’ve proven to you that not everyone who looks at you sees you that way. Some of us see you. And you deserve a chance. You deserve a chance to be happy.’
‘So, to summarise, you think I should take a risk. But you’re not prepared to take one with me?’
Oh, they were really doing this. Her heart started pounding and she could feel the heat in her cheeks as her face flushed. They were talking about their feelings and acknowledging that this was about to get complicated. And for all her pushing him to be brave, she was terrified. Of this. Of him. Of getting hurt if she decided she wanted to be brave again too.
But what was she afraid of, really? Now that she understood Finn, she trusted him. She had trusted him with her body last night, and today she knew she could trust him not to hurt her, because he wanted her. All of her. Everything that she brought to a relationship. He had seen the darkest, most fearful parts of her character and he hadn’t flinched. The only thing that he had done that had made her mad was to give her the money to pursue her academic ambitions. It was hardly a capital crime. She calmed her breathing, felt her face gradually cool, and then threw down the gauntlet.
‘So, what are we going to do about this?’
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
WHAT WERE THEY going to do about it? Right now, half his brain was voting enthusiastically for heading straight back upstairs, directly to his bedroom, saving the talking for later. They’d done pretty well communicating that way last night. But it had hardly made things less complicated.
What if Madeleine was right and he was holding back because he was scared? Was that who he wanted to be—someone who missed out on the thing that they desperately wanted because they weren’t brave enough to take a risk?
And, God, did he want her. He had wondered yesterday if maybe this blinding lust was the result of a very long dry spell as much as it was about her—but he couldn’t have been more wrong. He wanted her even more now than he had before and he couldn’t imagine existing in a form that didn’t want her. How had he thought that he could just walk away from feelings like that?
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‘You’re right. I’ve been scared. I am scared. Divorcing Caro was the biggest knock to my upward trajectory since as far back as I remember. It floored me. And I was terrified that I was going to lose everything—that the business would fail and I would fail and it would be a slippery slope back into poverty.’
Madeleine watched him in silence, her expression serious as he looked for the words that would explain why he had taken so long to give in to the feelings that had been assaulting him since she had walked back into his life.
‘And then you showed up and there was this connection between us and I knew it was something powerful. Something important. Something I knew I wouldn’t want to stop, if it started.’
‘Which is why you’ve been fighting it.’
‘Yes. I mean, fighting it pretty ineffectually, but yes.’
‘I think after last night we can agree neither of us did a great job at that.’
She smirked, and he felt it all the way in his gut. But he had been fighting it for a good reason. Because his life had fallen apart last year, and he had been scared in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a kid. In a way he never wanted his own children to experience.
‘I can’t promise that if we try this it will work, Finn. There’s no guarantee.’
‘But you want to try?’ he asked.
‘Do you?’
God, why does this have to be so hard? Finn thought. Why does it have to be so scary?
He couldn’t imagine contemplating this sort of risk for anyone but Madeleine. But, scary or not, he couldn’t see how he could walk away now. He had fallen in too deep without even realising it. How could he walk away when he had had a taste of what it was to see someone and be seen? To have peeled away one another’s fears and defences and looked one another in the eye, knowing that the only thing that would get in their way now was a lack of courage.
He knew that Madeleine had courage by the bucketful. She was the one that had brought them to this point. He didn’t want to be another person who let her down.
‘I don’t need guarantees, Madeleine,’ he said, examining his feelings, boiling it down to what really mattered. ‘I just need you.’
She looked at him for a long moment. ‘Why?’