Not that he would mind. He could deal with a little emotion. What he couldn’t deal with was seeing this strong, smart woman driven to tears by a series of awful, unfair events. “Thanks, Julie. Listen, I gotta go,” Lily said, her eyes flicking to him for the first time during the conversation, as though she had forgotten he was there until just that moment. “I’ll let you know as soon as I hear any news on my flight tomorrow. Love you.”
“Love you, too. Take care of yourself.”
He heard the call end, but he stayed silent, pretending to read while Lily clicked and typed for a few more minutes on the computer. But after a while he looked up, curious to see her face, and immediately jumped out of his chair. She was crying silently, tears falling slowly down her cheeks even as she worked. She swiped at them with the sleeve of her pajamas as though they were just a minor annoyance.
He was at her side in three long strides, not even hesitating before he took hold of her hands and gently tugged her upright, then wrapped his arms around her slender body. And that’s when the dam broke. She grabbed on tight, gave one pathetic “Oh,” and then sobbed into his neck.
Chapter Four
This was so embarrassing.
After several minutes of weeping on Komarov’s T-shirt, Lily finally composed herself with several long, deep breaths and tried to pull away from his warm, solid chest. But his arms trapped her tightly, not letting her leave him when all she wanted to do was run into the bedroom and hide.
She had just lost it in front of him. She felt like the biggest loser in history.
He reached up and took the towel off her head. It had already gotten all skewed when she had pushed her nose into his collar, and her hair must look like a mess, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just kept making soft, shushing sounds, and after a while, she relaxed into his embrace.
Which felt really, really good. So good to be pressed against almost his entire length, front to front, breasts to chest, her legs between his as he leaned against the back of the chair and supported her weight against his body.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered into his shirt. “I’m so embarrassed. You must think I’m the worst sister in the world.”
He laughed softly, and she felt the vibration through his chest. “Not particularly, no. Sounds like you’ve been a pretty great one, actually. Greg, Andrew, and Meredith—are they your other siblings?”
Lily nodded against his chest, her damp hair rasping against the fabric of his T-shirt. “Greg and Andrew are my older brothers, and Meredith is Andrew’s fiancée. Julie is almost nine years younger than I am and our dad died when she was only thirteen. For many years after his death, Mom lost a lot of her spark, and I think that was hard on Julie, even though Mom tried really hard to stay positive for Julie’s sake. The rest of us were out of the house by then, and I always felt like Julie got the short end of the stick, spending her teen years without a dad, a grieving mom, and siblings who all lived far away…”
She trailed off. “I’m sorry. I’m rambling. I swear, I’m not usually such a basket case. It’s been a rough week.”
He tsked at her. “Even if you wept like a baby on a regular basis, it sounds like you have good reason to. And…not that I was listening”—she gave a weak laugh against his shirt—“but it sounded like you really are being too hard on yourself. It seems to me that you tried very hard to make sure she never felt like she had missed out.”
Lily sighed and shrugged. “I tried to go back home as often as possible. I pushed for consulting gigs in North Carolina—where I’m from—and guilted Greg and Andrew into coming for every holiday. Even Flag Day, for goodness’ sake.”
He laughed again, this time a short, barking laugh that made her smile. “It doesn’t sound like ‘worst sister’ behavior to me. In fact, if you were only in your early twenties, it was probably something that few of your contemporaries would have done for a teenaged sister.”
Her shoulders lifted in a slight shrug, as if to say that it was no big deal. “Julie went through some hard times in high school with another girl that bullied her. She did so well at her university, but even so, I think not having us around as much to protect her during those difficult high school years really affected her.” She took another deep breath and sank into him. His hand came up to caress her back, gently rubbing in long, soft strokes from her neck to her waist.
“I’m sorry,” she repeated, and he paused. She could tell he disliked when she apologized for herself, but she pressed on. “You’re making a lot of solid, rational points, and ordinarily I would be listening to you with a much more open mind. This just happens to be the near-culmination of an extremely bad, bad week, and it might actually get even worse if I don’t make it to Julie’s graduation. I recognize it’s irrational, but her graduation has become some sort of symbolic thing for me. It’s just important.”