“I get it. I understand this wasn’t a game.” I folded up the article. “But if you had . . . Those things you said after the dinner with Hayden and Avery. I quit because—”
“That was the point. I had to get you off the yacht and out of danger.” He shoved his hands through his hair. “My mate said that if I didn’t recruit you, his client would, and once you were involved you would have been a target on multiple fronts. You weren’t safe on the yacht.”
I exhaled. “So you didn’t mean them?”
“Of course not,” he said, frowning, as if he were in pain. “I knew how difficult it would be to get you to leave given how professional you are. I had to say the worst thing I could think up. I didn’t believe any of it. My feelings for you are . . . almost the exact opposite to how I came across that evening. I could never mean anything . . . You’re too important. I was trying to make you leave.”
My heart began to pound. What Landon was saying changed everything. And it wasn’t that I just had to rely on his word. I was holding the evidence. “Why didn’t you tell me as soon as the arrest was made?” The article was dated two months ago. “All this time, I’ve been thinking . . .” I’d been thinking that he was a cold, heartless liar. But nothing had added up until now.
“I didn’t think you’d want to see me. I assumed you’d forget about me soon enough.”
If only I could have relegated him to the dungeons of my memory.
“I know what we had was . . . casual,” he said. “You weren’t what I was looking for—what I’ve always historically looked for, but . . . you were . . . you are important to me.”
My stomach shouldn’t have flipped like it did. I shouldn’t be replaying the way he said important in my head.
“I regret not seeing that. I regret not understanding how important you were until . . . I won’t say ‘until it was too late,’ Skylar. Because I can’t accept that.”
His stare was pleading and determined, and he reached for me then stopped himself.
“I don’t know what to say,” I replied. “All those weeks, I thought you were one person and you ended up being another. Even your name was a lie.”
“But you said you understood?”
“I do. Honestly. But it’s still difficult. Anyway, it just doesn’t matter anymore. I’m here. You’re back in England. We were going to end eventually anyway.”
“I’m not sure about that,” he said, holding my gaze. “If I’m honest with myself, and you—because that’s what you deserve and what I’m really trying to be—I don’t think I would have been ready to say goodbye at the end of the summer.” He blew out a breath like he’d just made it to the top of a mountain, and I almost smiled. Something told me that talking about his feelings wasn’t easy for Landon.
But he was trying.
And I had to appreciate that. He was trying for me.
“Our lives are so different, Landon. I’m just a waitress, at a diner, in the middle of the United States. You’re in London doing God knows what.”
“I’m going to be consulting for MI6. They want my skills and expertise, but I wouldn’t be working for them full time. I’ve gotten used to being my own master.”
He’d shared more about himself in the last twenty minutes than he had all summer, and I wanted to encourage him. “Are you allowed to tell me that?”
“I can’t give you details, but yes, I can tell you that much.”
I nodded, though I wasn’t sure what to say.
“I live in a penthouse in the center of London,” he continued. “My business has always done well, and I lived comfortably, but I didn’t make big money until I sold it.”
I swallowed. He was really, really trying. And it clearly took so much effort. He’d tracked me down and flown out here. He hadn’t just called. My defenses began to look like a clumsy fort constructed by a seven-year-old to keep out an imaginary monster rather than the arguments of a grown woman.
“Tell me something else that’s true,” I said.
“I’ve wanted to join the SAS since I was fourteen. I meant what I said about Christmas and Mariah Carey. I’d have preferred to do my own ironing on the boat. And . . . I miss you.”
I pressed my lips together and held back from launching myself into his arms. “Yeah, August’s ironing wasn’t great.” I paused, trying to decide what to say next. “And I miss you, too.”
He moved toward me, and I held out my hand. “But that doesn’t mean that—”
“It means that you miss me,” he said. “It’s a start and I’ll take it.”
I closed my eyes in a long blink. “A start? Maybe it’s better as an end.”