Get a Clue(79)
“Do not.”
He touched the tip of her wrinkling nose. “Do so.”
She clapped her hand over her nose and made a disparaging sound. “You can’t know that about me—you don’t know me.”
Contemplating her, he pulled up his own jeans. “I might not know every little thing yet, but I’m getting a pretty good start.”
“No,” she said with a denying shake of her head, her eyes unhappy. “You aren’t. You can’t be. Don’t be.”
“Too late. Want to hear what I know already?”
“No—”
“You tend to jump into things heart first—”
“I’m changing that.”
“You’re sweet when you’re tipsy—”
“I wasn’t that tipsy that first night—”
“I know that you hate the dark and spiders, that you have a thing for incredibly sexy lingerie—”
“Circumstantial.”
He curled his hand around the back of her neck, stroking his thumb over the soft, sweet spot of her nape. “I know that you’re intelligent, funny, and incredibly passionate. You care about others, sometimes too much, and you care about me. None of that is circumstantial.”
“It’s too early to care.”
“Yeah? Then why did you come to me last night?”
“I was scared.”
“I didn’t see you crawling into bed with Dante, Patrick, Lariana, or Shelly.”
In a telltale gesture, she looked away. “So I care too early. Another fault.”
“I think you also trust me, at least a little.”
“Trust is a bad word, Cooper.”
“Doesn’t have to be.”
“Maybe you missed some of my background,” she said. “Three failed engagements, remember?”#p#分页标题#e#
“I can’t help but remember. You wield them around like a shield.”
“Three engagements,” she repeated. “That’s a helluva lot of wielding. A lot of failures.”
Which was what was getting to her, he guessed. “You didn’t have your heart in at least two of those engagements, Bree. I think you wanted to, you meant to, but you didn’t, not really.” He kept his hands on her hips when she would have turned away. “I know that first one messed with your head, but not every serious relationship ends in pain. I promise you.”
She let out a soft breath. “I don’t know.”
“But I do. Getting engaged was a way to make a great showing. You could hide behind it, holding back all you want, especially with the particular men you picked.”
“I don’t follow you.”
Yes, you do. “You picked men who weren’t going to love you, not the way you want to be loved.”
She stared up at him.
He stroked her silky hair. “Am I close?”
“No.” But she swallowed hard. “No.”
“I’m different, Bree. What we could have is different.”
“It’s a chemical attraction. Period.”
It was so much more than that, but she was standing there, arms tight around herself, breathing a little ragged, her poor bruised heart in her eyes, and he found he couldn’t tell her. It was something she had to see herself.
Unfortunately for him, she wouldn’t see it, because willing as she was to share her body, she wasn’t willing to share much else. She shied away from true intimacy, and apparently that bothered him more than he would have thought possible.
“I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that this was supposed to be my honeymoon,” she said, closing her eyes. “I didn’t count on meeting you, Cooper.”
“Yeah, well, you weren’t on my calendar, either. But I’m glad it happened.”
This brought a ghost of a smile to her lips. “I wanted to talk to you about Edward.”
He sighed. From lovers to spies.
“They were all afraid of him.”
“I know.”
“I think he was rough.”
“Physically?” he asked.
“I don’t know, but he yelled at them. A lot.”
“Even Dante and Patrick?”
“Patrick, yes,” she said. “Lariana said he totally demeaned him at every turn, and he only put up with it because—”
“Because they’re related.”
“Yes.” She sounded surprised. “How did you know?”
“Dante told me that much. What else?”
“Patrick has trouble keeping jobs. He’s sweet and kind, but not all that great at what he does. Apparently he really wants to be an artist, but he needs the money from this job. He’s a painter. That’s how he and Lariana got together—she bought one of his paintings as a gift for her father. Shelly said that Patrick was late for work the morning before we got here because he’d been up all night painting, and he and Edward had a terrible fight about it.”