She licked her lips, seemingly as lost for words as he was filled to the brim with them tonight. “The women you’ve dated, they were lucky.”
It was the last thing he’d expected her to say, and so off base that he barked, “You’re wrong.”
Shaking her head, she ticked off her fingers. “First, you defended me and my clothing choices to Alec. Second, you got him to apologize, which is nearly impossible. Third, you just told me all the reasons you believe a movie star would want to be with me. I’m just your client, so if you were anything at all like this with your girlfriends—”
“I wasn’t.” He bit out each word. “I’m not.” And she was nowhere near being just a client.
She made a face, one that was far too adorable for his peace of mind. “I find that hard to believe.”
He could have told her any number of stories about the women he’d dated and dropped over the years. The way each woman went in—then out—a revolving door, one after the other. But he didn’t want to tell her those stories, because he didn’t want to dim the light in her eyes when she looked at him. As though he might be a good guy after all.
He yanked another rose from the bucket so hard that the petals snapped from the stem. “We should get back to work before Christie starts to worry that we aren’t up to the task of decorating this thing.”
Suzanne stared at him for a few moments before picking up another couple of blooms and getting back to work. As they continued in silence, voices and laughter drifted up on the breeze from the beach that had been empty earlier. A couple was walking in the moonlight, their arms around each other. When they stopped to kiss, something throbbed deep inside Roman’s chest, right in the place that had always remained so numb and unaffected.
Suzanne deserved a man who worshipped her the way the man on the beach obviously adored the woman he was with. And yet, the thought of her with anyone else ate him up.
“I wonder what that’s like,” she said in a soft voice. “To be with someone you can share all your fears with. Someone you can trust with your darkest secrets. Someone who always makes you laugh. Someone you can’t wait to wake up and see every single morning. Someone who will hold your hand on the beach at night and kiss you like they can’t live without you.”
Roman had shared more with Suzanne than he ever had with anyone else.
He’d trusted her with darkness that he’d never before revealed.
She’d made him laugh from the start.
He looked forward to seeing her first thing every morning.
And he was dying to take her hand, out there on the beach, and kiss her.
Roman had always assumed the biggest mistake he could make would be sleeping with one of his clients. But now he knew better. While crossing those physical lines was undoubtedly bad, losing his heart to Suzanne was what would ultimately break him.
“Have you ever fallen in love, Roman? Been so head over heels that you couldn’t think about anything but her?”
Yes. The word burned a hole in his tongue. With you.
But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t admit that he was committing the cardinal sin of falling for his client. This wedding, all her cousins who were so deliriously happy with their mates, knowing she was off-limits, being too close to her for too many hours—all these things had to be playing into the crazy thoughts he was having.
Roman didn’t love. Hell, he hadn’t been anywhere close to feeling this way before. So to think that it could happen this fast? And with a woman who was the polar opposite of every other one he’d been with?
No. He couldn’t go there.
He wouldn’t let himself go there.
And yet, as he stared into Suzanne’s eyes, he knew all this lying to himself wouldn’t make a damned bit of difference. Because she meant something to him. Something big that wasn’t going to go away like the other women who had passed through his revolving door.
When he didn’t answer her question, and she didn’t push him on it, he should have been relieved. Should have been glad that the next words out of her mouth were, “Can you come wind the other side of this stem for me to the ceiling beams? I thought I was tall enough to do it, but I miscalculated.”
The space was so tight that in order to reach the long stem, he had to wedge in against her, his chest to hers, their hips and thighs flush. He nearly groaned at being so close to her, at getting to feel the press of her taut muscles and soft curves.
As he reached for the stem of the flower she’d already partially attached to the ceiling, his hands were shaking with barely repressed need, and his heart was pounding with emotion he had no idea how to deal with.