Since I Fell For You(63)

By the time he walked her up to her bedroom, the only thing she knew for sure was that she wanted him to wrap his arms around her and hold her. She’d known how to ask for a kiss, but she didn’t know how to ask for that. But when they stopped in front of her door and she turned to look up into his dark, serious eyes, he somehow knew. He’d barely opened his arms for her when she barreled into them.

Being close to him, touching him, was electric as always, but as he stroked her hair, there was comfort there too. So much warmth and relief that she swore she could almost fall asleep standing up, if he kept holding her like this.

“Get some rest, Suzanne.” His low voice caressed her the way she wished his hands would. “I’ll be right here in the morning.”

Despite the way her brothers had always watched over her—or maybe partly because of how they’d hovered so close—she’d spent her entire life proving to everyone that she was tough. Bulletproof. But tonight, it seemed, Roman saw the truth. That she was only human, after all. And sometimes she needed someone else to lean on.

Only the knowledge that he wasn’t going to disappear on her in the middle of the night could have made her let him go. Taking one last deep breath of his clean, masculine scent, she forced herself to draw away from his arms. But instead of letting her go completely, he slid his hands up from her waist to cup her face.

“No one has ever stood up for me the way you did tonight. I would never want to come between you and your brothers, but you need to know how much it meant that you’d face them down for me.”

God, she loved it when he touched her like this. When he looked at her like she amazed him. Couldn’t he see that he amazed her too?

“They tend to forget how to be rational when they go into overprotective mode.” She wanted to say so much more. She wanted to invite him into her bedroom to continue what they’d started in the forest with the kiss of a lifetime. But Roman would never forgive himself for sleeping with her in her father’s house, with her brothers down the hall.

Roman was one of the most respectful, honorable people she’d ever met. Regardless of how badly she wanted him—needed him—it wouldn’t be fair to ask him to cross any more boundaries tonight. Or to break any more of his rules. Especially when she still hadn’t completely figured out her own boundaries, her own rules, where he was concerned.

Her heart had never been at risk like this before. And the truth was that for all she claimed not to be afraid of anything, right now she was downright terrified.

His lips brushed her forehead as he lowered his hands from her face. “Good night, Suzanne.”

“Good night, Roman.”

When she stepped inside her bedroom and turned on the light, she almost didn’t recognize the woman who stared back at her from the mirror over the dresser. Had her eyes ever been that bright? Her skin that flushed? Her expression so full of longing?

Turning away from the mirror, she unzipped her dress and forced herself to hang it up instead of leaving it lying in a heap on the shiny pine floorboards. By the time she’d finished brushing her teeth, her eyes were nearly shut. Wearing only her underwear, she crawled beneath the sheets. But the sleep she so desperately needed wouldn’t come.

By three a.m., Suzanne was so tired of tossing and turning that she put on the sweatshirt and sweatpants she kept in her old bedroom’s dresser and went downstairs to scrounge up a snack, then settle in with some new code on her laptop in the kitchen. If she couldn’t sleep, she might as well work.

After putting together a sandwich on Summer Lake Bakery’s delicious bread, she headed for the front porch that looked out over the lake. She was settling down on a double rocker under a blanket when she saw a shadow moving on the sand just beyond the porch.

She froze, her heart pounding like crazy and her breath stilling in her chest. Were her brothers right? Was someone truly after her? Someone who had tracked her down to her cousin’s wedding, news of which had finally leaked out to the entire world?

Damn it, no. She wasn’t going to sit here and be a victim. She was going to fight like hell.

But before she could scream or spring up out of the rocker to throw any punches, moonlight illuminated her father’s face. “Dad, it’s you.” She sat back hard, her hand over her chest as if that would help slow her heart rate.

“Honey, I didn’t mean to scare you.” He moved quickly up to the porch and scooted in next to her on the rocker. “I couldn’t sleep, so I took a walk along the shore.” He looked down at the sandwich she’d yet to take a bite of. “Couldn’t sleep either, I take it?”