The Way You Look Tonight (The Sullivans #9)(57)

"Wait a minute, what happened when you were sixteen?"

"I couldn’t stand feeling like a prisoner in my bedroom another second, so when my friend suggested we sneak out to go to a party a couple of streets over, instead of saying no like always, I said yes. But I had so little experience with regular teen stuff that when someone gave me a glass of punch, I drank all of it. And then another, until the next thing I knew, everything was a little fuzzy."

"There was Everclear in that punch, wasn’t there? A hundred and ninety-proof alcohol with no taste, no smell."

She nodded. "I think so. But I probably would have been okay and made it back to my bedroom without my parents ever finding out if I hadn’t gotten into a car with a boy I had a crush on." She winced. "He’d been drinking the punch, too, thus the crash into a tree in someone’s front yard. The air bags caught me and I was fine, but—" She shook her head, feeling foolish about it even all these years later. "Pretty stupid, huh?"

"Yes, it was stupid," he agreed, and her heart started to sink just as he added, "but every teenager is stupid. Stupid is what teenagers do."

"Why can’t my parents see that? Why can’t they see me for who I am now? For who I’ve become?"

"I wish I could promise you that they’d come around," Rafe said softly, "but since I can’t, all I can do is tell you what I see every time I look at you." His eyes were full of much more than desire as he caressed her cheek. "I see incredible beauty." He brushed the back of one hand down the curve of her body from breast to hip. "I see sensuality that shocks the hell out of me every single time we make love." He kept moving his hand down into the water until he’d picked up one of her hands. "I see the talent to make the best damned truffles in the world." He laid both of their hands between her br**sts. "I see a heart that’s big enough to take in my family showing up unannounced on your doorstep." He lifted her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to it. "But most of all, I see a woman who is so damned smart that she’s done something few people will ever even realize they need to fight for: You’ve built your life exactly the way you want it, doing what you love, in the place you want to be. You don’t need to prove one damned thing to anyone, Brooke. You already have."

With just a handful of the most beautiful sentences she’d ever heard, he’d answered every question she had left about falling in love with her next-door neighbor and friend, and had erased every last doubt.

All Brooke had ever wanted was for someone to actually see her—and to love her—for who she really was. Finally, she’d found him. The first boy she’d ever loved would also be the last.

"Remember how I said that if you ever gave up being a P.I., you should consider short-order cooking?"

He cocked his head at her strange response to his incredibly sweet words. "You’ve got a hankering for eggs all of a sudden?"

"No, but I want you to know I’ve changed my mind. Plenty of people can make great scrambled eggs, but so few can be a poet."

"I’m no poet, Brooke."

"To me," she said as she laid her head against his shoulder, "you are."

Chapter Twenty-one

Rafe wanted to do anything he could to strip away the lingering pain in Brooke’s eyes from her phone call with her parents. But since more lovemaking would only put her more behind on her truffle-making schedule, he offered his two hands in whatever way she could use them to finish getting the rest of her orders made. She took him up on it with a big, happy smile that had him wasting a few more minutes of her tight deadline in his arms despite his best intentions to keep his hands off her until her work was done.

Earlier in the day, he’d been worried about being in her way, but as she quickly showed him what she needed him to do, he realized he should have given her enough credit to know exactly how to put him to work in such a way that he’d be a help rather than a hindrance.

He hated the thought of anyone harming her in any way. When he’d walked in after she’d gotten off the phone with her parents and she’d told him she’d needed him, he’d been desperate to heal the hurt in her eyes by replacing it with pleasure. Their lovemaking on the kitchen counter had been wild and hot, but more than that, it had been full of the sweetness that was at Brooke’s core.

Everything she did held that same beautiful contradiction. The combination of heat and coolness in her chocolates. The simple sundresses over naughty lace and silk...or nothing at all. Wicked and oh so good. A man would be a fool not to look deeper than the surface with Brooke.

Did that mean he’d also have to be an even bigger fool about the background check he’d ordered?

And yet, even though Rafe had meant every word he’d said to her in the bathtub, though he’d seen with his own eyes her beauty, her brains, and how big her heart was, what about all those years he hadn’t been with her? Could there be something he needed to know that was bigger than sneaking out at sixteen and getting drunk, something she would never admit even to him? Something that would tear them apart down the road?

"Rafe?" He didn’t realize he’d given voice to his frustration at the battle raging inside of him until she said his name. "You’ve already done so much to help. I’ll come to bed after I’ve made my deliveries."