Eric wraps one arm around my waist from behind while I busy myself at the counter. Swiping my hair to one side, he bares my neck and kisses it gently.
“I want you to relax. I’ll do everything.”
“You don’t have to,” I tell him. He turns me around, caressing my cheek.
“Right, but you had a tough day, and I don’t want you to do anything else right now. Okay?”
Sighing, I lean in to his caress, a little overwhelmed by so much attention and care. “Thank you for coming with me tonight. At the charity and now back here. You don’t have to spoil me.”
“Oh, but I do.” He kisses my forehead and adds, “You deserve to be spoiled. And I want to be the man to do it.”
“Okay,” I say, almost breathless, stepping aside. “How was your day? I’m warning you, I don’t want to talk about what happened tonight, so you’d better talk. I want to hear something nice.”
“My mother sends you her compliments,” Eric says as we sit at the small table in the living room, eating. “I sent her one of your bracelets as a birthday present.”
“When was her birthday?”
“Yesterday.”
“You should fly over and celebrate with her.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll take her and Julie to dinner when I return to Boston. That’s our tradition.”
“She doesn’t like parties?”
He smirks, almost looking amused. “Her idea of a party is a high-brow bridge game with her friends. Julie and I try to get out of them as often as possible.”
“I see. Well, Ava’s birthday is coming up. You’ll see how my family celebrates birthdays. Come to think of it, I’m not sure if the party is still on. It was supposed to take place at my parents’ house….”
“How is your dad feeling?”
“Okay. Trying to blackmail the doctor into releasing him sooner.”
Eric chuckles. “But your family is there almost round the clock. It’s as if he is home.”
“I think he feels powerless there. I think that’s been his problem lately. He wants to prove that he can still do things on his own.”
“Ha! He sounds like my mother.”
A few minutes of silence follows before he says, “Pippa, I don’t want to be pushy, but I think we should talk about tonight. That douche bag—”
“He was not himself,” I murmur.
“Don’t make excuses for him.” His tone is so cutting that I flinch. “I heard what he told you. He made you feel like you were not important, like you were dirt. He deserved getting punched for that alone.”
“I really wasn’t important to him,” I clarify. “Can we change the subject now?”
I rise from my chair, taking our plates and bringing them to the kitchen. Eric follows me.
“It would be good for you to talk about this,” he says, hugging me from behind while I pretend to scrub off the plate on the counter.
“I already talked to you about Terence.”
“There’s more. Why are you afraid to open up to me?”
Slowly, I turn around, fixing my gaze on the top button of his shirt. “Because you’re leaving.”
Eric tilts my head up until I have no choice but to look him in the eyes. “That doesn’t mean what we have isn’t real,” he says.