“I thought I did at the time. Now I don’t know for sure.”
“How many of them did you love?”
“Please—”
“How many?”
“Two.”
She gulped. Lord, she wanted to hate those two girls, but hate didn’t come quickly. She ached with the knowledge that he’d given his heart to them, but she was strangely comforted to know that he’d cared for them before sharing himself.
“Laire,” he said, interrupting the miserable silence between them, “I’m sittin’ here feeling like I should apologize for somethin’, but frankly that’s bullshit.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t come from a place where sleepin’ with someone before marriage is wrong. And I know you do, and I respect that, darlin’, but I’m not going to say I’m sorry for playin’ by the rules of the world I live in.” He paused again, as though waiting for her to say something, but she couldn’t. She didn’t trust her voice. “I will say this: I treated all five girls—women—with kindness and respect.” Again he paused, adjusting his hands on the steering wheel. “Maybe you wish I’d say that I regretted sleepin’ with them, but I won’t say that, even for you. Every experience I’ve had, every person I’ve known, every step I’ve taken, eventually led me here, to this car, sittin’ next to you. And I wouldn’t trade that for anythin’, Laire. So it is what it is. And if knowin’ that I slept with five women means that you don’t want to know me anymore, I’ll be sorry. But it’ll tell me that we’re too different to meet in the middle. It’ll tell me that this wouldn’t have worked out anyhow.”
“Shut up,” she blurted out in a whisper.
“I’m just tryin’ to—”
“That was beautiful,” she said, blinking her eyes furiously but unable to keep tears from slipping down her cheeks.
She didn’t love it that he’d slept with other women.
But his words.
Oh, God, his sweet, careful, candid, heartfelt words about his past determining his future made her want to embrace those women and thank them for helping to make him the man sitting beside her today. And then she knew: that’s how she would live with it. That’s how she would accept his experience—as a gift, not a curse—because this man sitting beside her was her first love, and he wouldn’t be who he was today without all the days that had come before.
“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, reaching blindly over the bolster to hold her hand.
She took his hand and anchored it between hers, raising it to her lips to press a sweet kiss between the strong grooves of bone and vein.
“And you just about gave me a heart attack, darlin’.”
She kissed his hand again, then settled it on her lap, cradling it between her palms like a treasure. “Me? How?”
“That’s questions twelve and thirteen,” he said, turning right at a green sign that read “Fort Raleigh National Historic Site” and below that, “The Elizabethan Gardens.” “I was more than half afraid you were going to make me turn this car around and drive you back to Hatteras.”
“You think I could give you up so easily, Erik?”
“That’s fourteen. And darlin’, I’m still learnin’ who you are. But, my heart . . .” He paused. “It fuckin’ hurt to think you might.”
“I’m . . .” She gulped, swiping at her damp cheeks as she took a deep breath. “I’m already in too deep, Erik.”
He turned into a parking space, pressed a button to shut off the engine, and turned to look at her. He reached for her face, cupping her cheek, his dark eyes searching hers.
“Laire,” he whispered. “I’m falling in love with you.”
Her heart lurched with the sweetness of it.
“Erik . . .”
“Madly.”
She reached for his face, and their lips met hungrily, sealing their new bond, their new love, with a passionate, furious kiss.
Chapter 9
The last time Erik had been to the Elizabethan Gardens in Manteo, it had been as an escort to Vanessa for her parents’ thirtieth-anniversary party, three years ago. Eighteen at the time, they weren’t old enough to drink, but Pete had managed to swipe a bottle of Champagne, and they’d hidden in a corner of the Woodland Garden, passing it around until it was empty.
Erik’s mother had drunk too much that night, loudly sharing the costs to upgrade Utopia Manor with a small pack of groupies by the fountain in the Sunken Garden, which embarrassed his father. As retribution, about halfway through the festivities, his father disappeared for longer than seemly with one of those groupies, adjusting his pants when he finally reemerged from the little copse that held a Virginia Dare statue.
And Erik had seen it all.
Since his childhood, he’d seen too much.