“Are you pissed because you’re losing, or are you pissed that I kissed her?” he asked her through narrowed eyes.
Anger flared deep inside her. Anger over that woman. Over Charlie. Over the three thousand miles between her and Clay. Anger, annoyance and frustration all fused into a cocktail of heat and rage as she grabbed his shirt collar. “Thanks for pointing that out, because it’s kind of both. I have a shitstorm of trouble waiting for me back home if I don’t win,” she said.
“That’s not true. I told you I’d help you,” he said, and his hand moved briefly towards his pocket, but then he stopped.
“Why do you keep reaching for your phone? That’s not your style.”
“Flynn is out with the Pinkertons. Just wanted to make sure it’s all going well,” he said, then shifted quickly back to the matter at hand. “But I wish you’d stop worrying about the game. You’re going to be fine.”
“I don’t want you to help me, though. I want to win on my own,” she said, and she was damn near close to digging her heels into the sidewalk. Didn’t he get it? Didn’t he understand how important this was to her? But everything had collided right now. The game; Michele; the possibility of truth and lies.
“And you will.”
She pushed her hands through her hair. “I just wish you’d told me when I asked you in San Francisco if you’d been involved with her. I asked you if Michele was your ex and you said she was just a friend, and always had been. But now it turns out you kissed her,” Julia said, but she knew deep down it wasn’t the kiss that bothered her. That wasn’t why she was upset about Michele.
“It just wasn’t important, but it’s not as if you’ve been totally honest with me.”
“I didn’t lie, though. I told you there were things I couldn’t tell you.”
“I feel like we’re parsing words here. I don’t understand why it matters that I kissed her. Hope this doesn’t come as a shock to you, but I’ve kissed other women before.”
“I know,” she hissed.
“So why does it matter so much that I kissed Michele once? I don’t even think about her like that.”
“Because. Because she is here, all the time. Because she sees you. Because I don’t get to.”
“We can change that,” he said, his voice suddenly soft, all the harshness banished from his tone.
“How? I live far away and she lives a block away,” she said, dropping her face in her hands, hating the sound of her own voice. “Ugh. Look what you’ve done to me. I’ve become this whiny woman pining away, and she’s lovely and smart and funny, and it pisses me off that she can see you any time she wants.”
He gently peeled her hands away from her face, tucking his finger under her chin and lifting her gaze to his. “I don’t feel a thing for her. I didn’t tell you when you asked if she was an ex because I don’t even think about her like that. I don’t think of her as an ex. It was one kiss, one time, one drunken night. Nothing more. I don’t think about her because you’re all I think about. To the point that I’m sure no man has ever felt this way for a woman. You shouldn’t be jealous of her. She should be jealous of you.”
She stared at him, narrowing her eyes. “Seriously, Clay? Cocky much?”
“It has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with how I feel for you,” he said, moving his hands down to her arms, holding her tight. “Every woman should be jealous of you because of how I feel for you. Because no man has ever wanted a woman like I want you. No man has ever craved a woman as deeply as I crave you. And no man has ever fallen this hard and this fast for a woman.”
Her heart stopped, then thundered furiously against her chest, wanting to leap into his hands. “I’m sorry,” she murmured, all her anger draining away. “I’m a jealous witch. It’s just hard for me to see her and know you’re so friendly, and that she’s so in love with you.”
He froze like a statue. Then seconds later, though it felt like a minute, he looked at her as if she’d just spoken Russian. “What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know that?” she asked, shocked.
“No.”
“It’s patently obvious to anyone who spends ten minutes with her. She’s madly in love with you, Clay.”
He swallowed, and shook his head, as if he were shaking the strange notion away. “How can you tell?” he asked, the words coming out all choppy.
“Because of how she looks at you,” she said, as if it were obvious, because to her it was.
“And that’s enough for you to conclude she’s in love with me?” For the first time ever she’d truly surprised him. She hadn’t intended to drop a bomb, but he so clearly didn’t see it at all.
“Yes.”
“Why? How? How can you tell she looks at me like she’s in love with me?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because I recognize the look.”
The look on his face was no longer shock. It was hope, and the dawn of something so much more. “You do?”
Then she realized she’d practically said it. “Yes.”
“How?”
“Because it’s how I look at you,” she said, the words falling from her lips in a tumble. Time slowed, and the moment became heady, rich with possibility. The air between them was charged, electric, like a storm. They were magnets, needing their opposite.
He reached for her, cupping her cheeks, brushing his thumb over her jaw then her bottom lip, watching her shiver. She looked up at him, and his eyes were fixed on her. Waiting for her. His lips parted, and she was wound tight with anticipation of what he’d say. “I love the way you look at me.”
Tingles ran down her spine, spreading to her arms, her fingers, all the way to her toes. “You do?
“I do. I love the way you touch me,” he said, taking her hand, and spreading her palm open on his chest. “I love the way you talk to me. I love everything about you. And I recognize the look in your eyes, too. Do you know why?”
She shook her head, and her entire body was trembling with want, with hope. “Why?”
“Because it’s the same as in mine. Because I love you, Julia. I am completely in love with you, and I love you, and I want you to love me,” he said, never breaking his gaze from hers, his beautiful brown eyes flooded with love.
“I do. I do. I do,” she said quickly, the tension in her chest disappearing, and relief washing over her in waves. “Clay, I love you so much.”
He ran his hands through her hair, burying his fingers deep. She felt him trembling. He returned a hand to her face, brushed the backs of his fingers against her cheek, and she leaned into him, savoring the gentleness of his touch. Feeling the reverence that he treated her with, like she was precious to him. He ran his hand down her neck to her throat. “Julia,” he said, his voice low but so intense as he spoke. “I have never fallen in love like this.”
His words bathed her in some kind of bliss, as if her veins flowed with liquid gold. “How have you fallen?” she asked, overwhelmed with all she felt for him, with the way her body seemed to reach for him, to need him.
“With everything I have. There is no part of me that isn’t in love with you. There is no part of me that holds back,” he said, his voice steady, certain.