When Iris had betrayed him, he had managed to convince himself that it was better this way, that his expectations had been too high—he couldn’t really expect a woman to love him and him alone, completely and forever. It was too easy for people to move from lover, wife or husband, to the next thing. It seemed that those sort of long-term, loving relationships were few and far between, really.
Even his parents, who had been married for ages, didn’t seem to really like each other. He supposed the best he could hope for was several jolly good flings in his lifetime.
But then he’d met Rachel, and a belief had sprouted within him. A belief so foreign to him that he couldn’t even name it—but he felt rather desperate not to lose it and knew, instinctively, that if he did lose it, it might possibly be lost forever.
So he screwed up his courage and bounded up the steps of her porch, rapping with great determination on her door.
He heard her coming down the stairs, heard the locks being undone. The door slowly opened, and there she stood, as gorgeous and curvy as ever. Her hair was long and unbound, curling with abandon around her face. She was wearing a long black skirt and slippers that had been fashioned to look like Holstein cows. She wore a simple, figure-hugging black sweater and the lavender shawl about her shoulders and a crystal pendant around her neck.
He had never seen a more attractive sight in his life, and he was rather surprised by how quickly his heart lifted in his chest when she smiled timidly. “Are those for me?” she asked, looking at the flowers in his hand.
“They are.”
She pushed open the door, stood aside to let him in. Flynn offered her the flowers, and when she took them from him, he couldn’t help himself; he caught her by the waist, and kissed her, like a man who’d been marooned on a deserted island for years. When he at last lifted his head, she was looking at him with such brilliance that every ounce of testosterone boiled up in him demanding more.
He kissed her again. A full, deep kiss, one that conveyed how much he hungered for her. Rachel responded warmly by curving into him, pressing her body against his.
When she pulled away, her smile was dazzling “I’ll just put these in water,” she said, and turned and walked to the back of the house.
Flynn set the champagne aside, shut the door, and shrugged out of his overcoat. With his hands in his pockets, he stood just beyond the archway that led to the dining room. Rachel returned a moment later, carrying a large crystal vase, and with a smile, set the flowers on the table and began to arrange them, leaning over the table, her long curls falling over her shoulder.
Everything that happened then was a blur of white hot emotion. She was like a magnet, drawing him to her, and he could not resist. He moved behind her, put his hand on her hair, stroking it, deliberately moving it aside, so that he could kiss her neck.
Rachel sighed softly when his lips touched her flesh.
“I missed you terribly, Rachel,” he whispered.
She responded by leaning her head to one side. “You missed Thanksgiving,” she murmured.
“I’m a sodding bastard,” Flynn said into the fistful of hair he had grabbed up in his hand. “I deserve to be beaten mercilessly and fed to lions.”
“It so happens I have a pair in the backyard,” she said, and turned around, put her hands to his chest. “But weren’t you going to ‘tell’ me something?”
“Tell you?” he muttered absently, and pressed his lips to her forehead.
“That . . . you can’t see me, or you’re leaving, or you’re sorry, but you just don’t feel the same—”
“What?” He laughed incredulously, laid his palm against her cheek and smiled down at her. “You’ve got it all wrong, love.”
“You said you needed to tell me some things,” she said, folding her arms across her middle.
Nothing was ever easy, was it? “Right you are,” he said, sighing. “I needed to tell you that I’m daft. That I made a horrible mistake—not once, but twice. First, in that I should have told you that I feel quite strongly about you—”
“Here we go,” she muttered, dropping her gaze.
Flynn slipped a finger under her chin and forced her gaze up. “I do,” he said in all seriousness. “Look at me now, will you, all atwitter, bearing gifts, begging for mercy. Why would I do that if I weren’t absolutely mad for you?”
“Really?” she asked, trying to look skeptical, but looking more hopeful.
“Really. Fantastically so. And the second thing I had to tell you was that my work crisis was a horrid fate of timing, but I should have called.”
She smiled timidly, punched him playfully in the chest. “You should have.”
She was forgiving him too easily. “There are more things I am certain I should tell you, really . . . such as my grades were absolutely abominable in history.”
Rachel laughed.
“I’m quite serious. My mother used to cry huge crocodile tears when I couldn’t name the order of the monarchy. And when I was a small boy, I was a bit chubby, and the other lads called me Sir Fatalot.”
That earned him a gay laugh, and Flynn kissed her neck, put his hands on her waist, sliding them up beneath her sweater, tugging her camisole from her skirt, so that he could touch her skin.