“I’ve been thinking.” She fumbles around with her hand. “If you wanted the ring for your mother, maybe I shouldn’t have taken it from you, and I shouldn’t have made fun of your name. It wasn’t very nice of me.”
My heart freefalls as she holds her ring out to me.
What?
“I keep going over our conversation in the shop that day and you said that you had wanted the ring for your mother for a long time,” she tells me softly.
I stare at the precious ring in her outstretched hand.
She shakes her head. “And I can’t have that on my conscience, knowing how badly you wanted it.”
“You don’t like it?” I breathe as a cluster-fuck of emotions start to run rampant through my mind.
“I love it. It’s the most precious thing I think I have ever owned.”
“Why, then?” I breathe.
I should be excited, instead I feel let down.
Shut up and take it!
She steps toward me, picks up my hand, and places the ring in my palm as she gently kisses my cheek. My arms immediately curl around her waist and I hold her close to me, inhaling her scent one last time.
She looks up at me with that kiss me look she does so well.
I want this woman.
One night.
What harm could one night do?
No.
Stop it.
“My name is Alastar,” I breathe into her hair. She smiles at me dreamily. I lift her hand and place the ring back on her finger. “And this is your ring,” I whisper. “It belongs with you.”
“But what if it belongs with you?” she asks, squeezing my hand in hers.
“I have no doubt it does,” I whisper with regret.
End this now. I step back from her and her face falls as her eyes search mine again.
“Don’t look at me like that,” I murmur.
“Like what?”
“Like you are disappointed with me.”
“I was just hoping…” She stops midsentence.
“Hoping what?”
“That you were going to kiss me again.”
“You are here with your boyfriend.” I snap.
Her face falls. “He’s… not my boyfriend.”
“You told me he was.”
“I lied. I’d only just met him that day.”
My gaze holds hers for an extended moment.
One night, I just want one night.
No.
“That’s good to know.” I step back from her, too tempted to stick around. “I have to go. Goodbye.” I nod.
She stands and watches me but remains silent while I turn and begrudgingly walk away.
* * *
It’s 11pm and I am in bed on my laptop, stalking the divine Miss Mathew’s Facebook page.
It’s nothing new. I have done the same thing every night since our impromptu kiss last week.
I’m not allowing myself to involve her in this, and I can’t believe I rejected the ring.
That was the plan. The whole plan was to get the ring, and yet when she offered it to me, I couldn’t take it from her.
I smile. What a sweetheart to offer it to me when I know how much she loves it. The rain pours down outside. I close my computer and turn off my lamp to lay on my back and stare up at the ceiling.
I feel flat.
I need to pick up my game.
This isn’t how it was supposed to go.
My phone beeps, alerting me to a text, and I frown. Who would be texting me at this time of night? I sit up and retrieve my phone from my side table. Emerson.
* * *
I’m thinking about you, Alastar Goodnight.
x
* * *
Shit.
Chapter 6
I sit on the bench seat under my window and stare down at the twinkling city lights below. It’s early on Saturday evening and Brielle is due here soon. The two of us are taking Hank on a woman-finding mission tonight. Operation Hump Hank is well underway. We went shopping today and made him buy new clothes. We got his haircut and his beard trimmed. Damn, I even bought the guy hair gel. I am preoccupied as my mind keeps replaying my conversation with Alastar last night. I hold out my hand and look down at my beautiful ring.
“Maybe the ring belongs with you,” I said.
“I have no doubt that it does,” he replied.
For some reason that sentence is on repeat in my brain. What did he mean by that? He has no doubt that ring belonged with him, yet he rejected it when I offered it to him. My mind goes to the old lady back in Heirloom. “Trust yourself,” she told me.
I gaze down to the people walking below on the street.
“Listen to your voice,” she said.
I frown as an uneasy déjà vu feeling sweeps over me. I’ve had it all day.
If I trust my instincts, then I know for certain that he wanted to kiss me last night. I could feel it in the way he wrapped his arms around me and I could see it in his face. I haven’t had this feeling from another man before, this undercurrent of affection masked as strong physical attraction.
Maybe it is just a physical attraction? Maybe I just never had one before? Last night, when I got home, I paced back and forth in my bedroom for an hour as the old lady’s voice invaded my head again. I trusted my instincts and I text him goodnight.
I pick up my phone now and swipe it on to go through to my messages. Yep, it’s still there, even though I have read and re-read his reply at least one hundred times today.
Goodnight, Em.
X