‘So,’ he said, his voice slightly slurred from the whisky. ‘You came back.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
LARENZO GAZED AT Emma standing in the doorway, her hair creating a golden nimbus about her lovely face, and thought he was seeing a vision. Perhaps he’d drunk more whisky than he’d realised.
‘Larenzo...’ she whispered and he straightened in his chair, flinging his glass onto the table where it clattered noisily.
‘I didn’t think you were going to return,’ he said. She shook her head as she moved into the room.
‘Why would you think that?’
‘Why wouldn’t I? You’ve made no secret of how you resent me forcing you to come here. And I know I did blackmail you, Emma. I know that wasn’t honourable, but...’ He raked a hand through his hair, realising his tongue was a little looser than he’d thought. He shrugged and reached for his whisky again. ‘Even now I have no regrets. Does that make me a bad man?’
‘No,’ Emma said quietly. She came to sit in the chair opposite him, the chessboard they’d played so many enjoyable games on between them. ‘It doesn’t make you a bad man, Larenzo.’
‘Are you sure about that?’ he asked and took a final swallow of whisky. It burned all the way to his gut. ‘Everyone in the world still seems to think I’m guilty.’
‘I don’t,’ Emma whispered and Larenzo turned to look at her.
‘Do you mean that?’ he asked, and to his shame his voice choked slightly.
‘Yes. I do.’ She gazed at him with her lovely golden-green eyes, everything about her steady, trusting. And yet how could he possibly deserve her trust? How could he trust her?
‘Emma...’ he began, and then, because he couldn’t keep himself from it, he reached out and curled his hands around her shoulders, then up so his fingers curved around the back of her skull and he cradled her face in his hands just as he had that night so long ago. Her skin was as soft and warm as he remembered, her lips just as full as he brushed his thumb across them.
Memories rushed through him, painful in their intensity, as Emma waited, her lips parted, her eyes closed.
How could he not kiss her?
And yet even as he bent his head, he resisted. He didn’t want a fling with Emma, didn’t want to hurt her, and yet he knew he wasn’t capable of anything else. Even now, with everything in him aching with desire and longing, he knew that. He had no trust, no love, to give. And so he pulled away.
Emma opened her eyes and gazed at him for a long moment. Larenzo gazed back, and in the silence of their locked gazes he thought she understood. She sat back in her chair, disappointment twisting her features for a moment before she composed herself.
‘So how was your weekend?’ she finally asked and he managed a rusty laugh.
‘Pretty awful. Yours?’
‘The same.’
He nodded, not wanting to go any deeper with this conversation, knowing he wouldn’t be able to handle it. ‘I was thinking, I haven’t seen any photographs of Ava from when she was small. You must have some.’
‘Yes, I do. Would you like to see them?’
‘Yes. Please.’
Emma nodded and then slipped from the room to retrieve them. Larenzo leaned back in his chair and let out a shuddering breath, forcing back the desire that was still rampaging through his system. Nothing was going to happen with Emma. He wouldn’t let it.
She returned a few minutes later, a pink baby book in her hands. ‘I don’t have all that many,’ she admitted, ‘because I was so sleep-deprived.’
‘I suppose that’s understandable,’ he said, and Emma handed him the book. She settled back into her chair as he opened it and gazed in wonder at a photograph of Ava when she was first born, red-faced and wrinkly.
‘She looks like a little old man.’
‘Meghan told me most newborns do.’
‘She also looks like she had a set of lungs on her even then.’
‘That she did. She came out screaming and waving her fists.’
Larenzo smiled and turned the page. He studied each photograph in turn, transfixed by these images of his daughter: first tiny and swaddled with tufts of dark hair, and then chubby-cheeked and bald when it had fallen out, and then sitting on a rug, showing two milk teeth as she grinned.
‘These are wonderful,’ he said and looked up at Emma. He was disconcerted to see affection suffusing her face, and now that the whisky had cleared from his brain he realised how much he had revealed a few moments ago. He cleared his throat and handed back the book. ‘Are you still pursuing photography? Beyond pictures of Ava, I mean?’