Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(115)

“Me, too. Sorry I didn’t tell you that you were being an idiot, right then and there. And I’m sorry I didn’t hear what you were asking. You weren’t asking me to believe you; you were asking me to believe in you. I didn’t hear you. But of course I did, Miles. Of course I do. I believe in you. I trust you. I trust us. I trust this.” She gestured to encompass him. Them. And then she started to cry.

“Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.”

He reached for her. She let herself be drawn into his arms, and he kissed her, her mouth, her wet cheeks, her eyelids. She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and she shuddered a little, like a kid who’d cried herself into hiccups.

The knot in his chest that had been clenched tight for weeks finally let him out of its grip, and he was pretty sure things were going to be okay. But he wanted more and better than okay. Deeper. More real. He owed her a lot of himself that he’d held back, and she deserved it after what she’d given him. I trust us. I trust this.

She’d stepped onto a high wire for him, thrown herself into the void—because that’s what trust was, ultimately, wasn’t it? A leap into darkness. One she’d been willing to make all along, if he’d let her.

“Can I talk now?”

She nodded. It was hard work not kissing her again, she was so wide-eyed and tearstained, her mouth soft and trembling. But now she was listening. Waiting. And here it went.

He took a deep breath. “I had this conversation with Owen. Where he reamed me out for acting like I was guilty, for refusing to talk to people about the whole embezzlement situation, for being antisocial. I was pissed at him when I got off the phone. But then I started thinking about it. Thinking about me and the way I’d acted. Thinking about you and the way you made—the way you make me feel. Nora …”

His throat had gotten tight again, and she let him turn away and gather himself.

“I watched you at that party,” he told her. “Watched the way you were with people. The way you are: no holding back. You were scared, I know you were scared after what happened with Henry, but your response to it wasn’t to hide. It was to be out there in the world. To live.”

Tears had welled up in her eyes again, but she didn’t drop her gaze. She looked into him, and it seemed as if she was drawing the words right out of him, the confession he’d wanted to make all along.

“When I found out I was a suspect, I did the exact opposite. I hid from everyone. Wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t … I think I thought that if I told people I was innocent, if I asked them to believe I was innocent, it would seem more guilty. The gentleman doth protest too much, methinks.”

She made a sound, and he said, “Crazy. I know. Anyway, then I met you. I met you and—Jesus, kissing you was the least of what I wanted to do. I wanted to bare myself. Skin, soul, whatever. I wanted you to know everything that was inside me. Everything I was afraid of. I wanted to swear I was innocent, beg you to believe me. But when I had the chance to, I didn’t.”

Her blue eyes searched his face. Seeing through and around and under and in. His heart beat steadily, skipped, lost its rhythm for a long, terrifying moment, found it again as the words spilled out of his mouth—the beautiful, splintered truth.

“I didn’t do it. I swear. I swear I didn’t do it.” His voice broke, cracked along the fault lines that had always been there, disintegrated.

She pressed her lips to his cheek, to his ear, and he drew deep breaths that were not quite sobs. Or maybe they were. He wasn’t sure of anything except the comfort of her body.

“Shh,” she said. “I know.”

Her words unknotted something so deep in his psyche that it felt like release. Like absolution. Like grace.

He kissed her then, because he needed some kind of anchor, because everything had wrenched loose: everything he’d been holding together and trying desperately not to freak out about, all the unsaid things that had fought their way out, all his fears that there wouldn’t be another opportunity to be with her, that he wouldn’t be able to see her, touch her, kiss her.

God, she was sweet, her mouth so receptive and responsive, her body curving toward his, her heat, his arousal, like she was homing, her hands everywhere, in his hair, on his ass, her thumb curving around his hip to find the head of his cock.

The security clerk cleared his throat loudly, and Miles set Nora back from him. “More where that came from. Later.”

“God, I hope so.”

“Promise.”

“Miles? If they charge you, if you can’t make them believe the truth, if you have to go to jail—”

He tried to cut her off, but it was as pointless as it had been earlier. She was determined to say it.

“Whatever happens, I’ll be with you.”

He hugged her so tight that she gave a little squeak; then he released her. “I can’t begin to tell you how much that means to me, but I’ve got some good news.” Her eyes got huge.

“After my talk with Owen, I had lunch with some people who work for me and asked them to forgive me for not being more open with them. I told them I was innocent and asked for their help.

“A few of them got up and walked out, but most of them stayed. I asked them to think about anything they might know about the vendor fraud, anything at all, no matter how small. A bunch of them called my lawyer afterward. One mentioned that my executive assistant had been weird and squirrelly one day about a certain vendor account. They’ve changed the direction of the investigation. I’m not off the hook, but they’re looking closely at his actions. We’ll know more soon.”