Sinful Love (Sinful Nights #4)(70)
“Sure. He knows how I feel,” she said.
Her mother squeezed her arm. “No. Have you told him you’re in love with him, too?”
She froze, with the glass of wine on the way to her lips. She was falling, yes. But in love? It couldn’t happen that fast. Not for her. Not when love was such a dangerous thing? Not when being in love meant she could be cleaved in two again?
“You should tell him,” her mother urged.
Annalise parted her lips, but words didn’t come. She wasn’t sure what to say, or if she could even give voice to all these questions stirring inside her. Was she ready to go into the fire once more?
“Tell him soon,” her mother whispered, then she pressed a kiss to Annalise’s cheek before continuing. “There are only two men you’ve ever brought to meet me. Julien and Michael. He loves you so. And I know it’s not a one-way street. I see the way you look at him. I see how you lean close to him. How your world seems to be his world.”
A lump rose in her throat. Her eyes welled with tears, but none fell.
After the check came and Michael insisted on paying, Annalise’s mother announced loudly that Patrick and Noelle would walk her home.
Noelle nodded vigorously. “Yes. We’ll help her up the steps.”
“Go,” her mother said, shooing them along. “Your home is around the corner.”
They said their good-byes, and Michael and Annalise turned the other direction. “They seem to want us to go to my house,” she said, floating the idea.
He tensed.
“Would you want to?”
“I’m not sure.”
She stopped on the street, reached for his hand, then looked him in the eyes. “We’re doing this, right?”
“Of course we are.”
“I want you to see where I live. You’re not just some man I’m slinking away to a hotel room to be with. You’ve had dinner with my family. I want you in my home. You’re part of my heart. Part of my life.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. His breath ghosted across her skin. His arms looped around her. With him, she felt so much potential, so much possibility, so much future.
She took him to her home.
*
I can handle this.
As he walked up the curving, carpeted staircase, his palm running along the dark oak banister, he steeled himself.
He’d run military intelligence. He’d negotiated with some of the toughest motherf*ckers in the security business. He’d helped his sister through tragedy. He’d survived the splintering of his family, making sure his younger siblings were cared for.
He could walk into the home Annalise had lived in with her husband. No problem whatsoever.
Inhaling quietly, he let the air fill his chest, imagined it transporting strength throughout his body—even though each step was leaden, each footfall heavier than the last.
Get your shit together, Sloan. Man up
Annalise unlocked the green door. It creaked open, and pride shimmered in her eyes. Her irises danced as she held out her arm and led him through the narrow foyer into the small kitchen.
“My home,” she said, beaming.
He catalogued the room. Red espresso cups. Sky blue dishes in the dish rack, and a clean sink.
Piece of cake. This was so manageable.
They wandered into a tiny living room, and before he could look around, she gestured to French doors that opened into a small den.
“This is my office,” she said proudly, and showed him some of the framed photos on the wall, shots she’d taken over the years. There were a few images from the Middle East that had won her awards, but mostly the photos were of simpler things.
A lemon yellow dresser.
A crowded street-side café.
A leaf blowing across the sidewalk. Even a few of her black and white boudoir shots.
“You really are talented,” he said, and his voice was calm, steady. This was easier than he’d thought. He didn’t know why he’d been such a wreck about seeing her home.
Until he spun around and drank in her living room for the first time.
Her husband was all he saw. A framed photo on her built-in bookcase of him holding a handful of maps under his arm. Wincing, Michael connected the dots. In the picture, Julien stood outside the map shop they’d passed last night.
Another image showed him drinking coffee, looking studious. Another everyday moment.
Michael’s eyes roamed to the low table that held a frame of her husband riffling through postcards at a sidewalk dealer. Cringing, Michael realized he’d walked along the Seine with her yesterday, maybe even past that dealer.
Her hand ran up his arm. It was warm and comforting, but right now he didn’t want it.
His reaction was emotional, not rational. It was passionate, not thoughtful. He could have devised a million logical explanations to settle his brain and cool his nerves. Instead, raw emotions pricked at him.
“There’s nothing I can do with you that you haven’t done,” he bit out.
“Don’t say that,” she said gently.
He gestured broadly. “He’s everywhere. His imprint is everywhere,” he said, and he felt like an ass. He turned around, his eyes narrowed. “And I feel like a complete f*cking schmuck for saying that and feeling that.”
“You’re not,” she said, shaking her head, her voice soft. “But your imprint is everywhere too. I have an entire photo album of our year together in Las Vegas. I’ve held on it. I took it to university. I even looked at it the other day before you came here, along with the photos I took of you at Caesars. One of those photos is on my desktop right now as I decide how I want to frame it or crop it.”