No Longer Forbidden(56)

“Rowan, I told you to take what you wanted, not …” His jaw worked as he scanned the neatly stacked bins and boxes. “I expected you to identify and keep what amounts to Cassandra’s estate—not disperse everything to charity and …” He shot his hand into his pocket where it clenched into a fist.

“I can’t take much. Where would I store it?”

“But you could sell things for a down payment on a flat and tuition for a degree. Why would you keep yourself as broke as you were when you walked into this house? Are you thinking about your future at all? What do you intend to live on?”

She frowned, not liking how defensive he made her feel for a choice she’d already made. It was a risk, yes, but one that actually gave her a sense of excitement.

“Frankie has—”

“Do not let Frankie exploit you,” Nic said, cutting her off. “I’ve cleared your debts with him so don’t let him bully you. And don’t worry about owing me. Forget that. Forget the credit cards from before. I was being a bastard because I was angry. That’s in the past. We know each other better now.”

“Do we?” He still thought her capable of selling off possessions for rent the way her mother would have. But she was taking a real job—one that was temporary, but paid a weekly wage and would get her on her feet. She was trying to act like an adult while an unrelentingly immature part of her clung to a rose-hued dream that her efforts at showing maturity would raise her in his estimation, that somehow he’d begin seeing her with new eyes. Eyes that warmed with affection.

“I know your love for Olief was genuine, Rowan. I believe he was looking out for you in every way he could because he felt as protective as any father.” Nic rubbed the back of his neck. Suffering angled across his face as he added, “I think you helped him become capable of experiencing and showing those sorts of feelings because you draw things out of people in a way I never could. I wouldn’t even know how to try.”

Tenderness filled her. You do, she wanted to insist, because he provoked intense feelings of many kinds in her. But her throat was filled with the breath she was holding. Was he saying that she’d taught him to experience deeper feelings than he’d ever expected? She searched his troubled brow.

He tensed his mouth, broodingly. “I’m convinced Olief would have made provision for you and your mother. If he didn’t he should have, and I’ll honor that. What you had before—accommodation, living expenses—I’ll go back to covering them.”

Her heart landed jarringly back to earth. Rowan reminded herself to draw a breath before she fainted. It came in like powdered diamonds, crystalline and hard. It took her a moment to find words.

“Let me guess. You’ll even let me grace your bed while you pay those expenses?” The bitterness hardening her heart couldn’t be disguised in her flat, disillusioned voice.

“That’s not how I meant it.” His shoulders tensed into a hard angle.

“You’re going to pay my expenses and not want to sleep with me?” she goaded.

His bleak gaze flicked from hers. “I can’t say I don’t want you. It would be a lie. The wanting doesn’t stop, no matter what I do.”

And it made him miserable, she deduced. No mention of love or commitment either.

Rowan told herself not to let his reluctant confession make a difference—especially when he was standing there not even looking at her, his bearing aloof and remote, but her heart veered toward him in hope anyway.

She lifted a helpless palm into the air. “It’s constant for me, too, but—”

“Then why can’t we continue what we started?” He pivoted his attention to her like a homing device.

“Because I don’t want to be your mistress!”

He rocked back on his heels, his jaw flexing like he’d taken a punch.

“I don’t want to be any man’s mistress,” she rushed on. “I want a relationship built on equality. Something stable that grows roots. Even if—” Her words were a long walk onto thin ice. She looked down at the pen she had unconsciously unwound so the center of its barrel fell open and parts were dropping out. “Even if it doesn’t include children, I still want something with a future.”

She looked up, silently begging for a sign that he wanted those things, too.

His eyes darkened to obsidian. His fists were rocks in his pockets.

“You’re right, of course,” he said, after a long, loaded minute. “All we had was a shelter in a storm, not something that lasts beyond the crisis. I’ll never again judge Olief for caving in to physical relief during a low point.”