The Best Goodbye (Rosemary Beach, #13)(34)

I just nodded and followed him to his office. I was afraid to look at anyone else, but I could feel their eyes glued on us. Waiting to see what was going on.

I followed him obediently, because honestly, I wasn’t sure anyone had ever told that man no. When had he learned to pack so much power into just one intent gaze and a few words?

When his office door opened, I went in right behind him, wondering if it was a mistake. He was in a strange mood, and I didn’t know how I was connected to it. When I stepped inside, he closed the door, and I jumped a little at the loud click.

“You wouldn’t look at me,” he said in a tight, thick voice.

I had looked at him. Did he miss that? We were looking right at each other before Hillary came into the room. “I don’t know what you mean,” I said, slightly breathless from the intense atmosphere in the room.

“No, you were looking at me, and then you stopped and wouldn’t look at me again.”

How was he making the oxygen in the room so thin? I tried to take a deep breath. “I looked away when you did,” I said in a whisper.

Captain took a step toward me, and the rest of the oxygen in the room evaporated. I needed to hold on to something. This wasn’t a mood I’d seen him in before. I had no idea how to deal with it. “I don’t want her. She offered. I sent her away. But you wouldn’t look at me,” he said, his voice so deep and raspy that I couldn’t keep my chest from rising and falling with each short intake of air.

“Oh,” I choked out, watching the storm in his eyes. The green had darkened to hazel, and the hard line of his mouth eased into something more . . . seductive. My legs felt weak.

“Yeah. Oh,” he repeated. “Why didn’t you look at me?”

Because I didn’t like it. I had no reason not to like it, but I didn’t. “I don’t know,” I lied.

The sharp upturn of the corners of his mouth told me he didn’t believe me. But the fullness of those lips was fascinating. I could watch them up close like this all day and never get bored. Had they been that full all those years ago? Or had I been too young to appreciate the beauty of his mouth?

“Addy.” His voice had gone even deeper, and I shivered at the sound of my name coming from those lips. He growled a curse that snapped my attention off his lips.

Looking at his eyes wasn’t easier. They were dark now, his pupils big with the intensity of his stare. “Don’t lie to me. Why didn’t you look at me?”

I blinked, trying to break this spell he was putting me under, but it didn’t help. I was going to need to grab his arms to keep myself upright if he kept this up. That, or find a seat to sink into. “You stopped looking at me.”

I forced myself to take a step back, hoping to get hold of myself, but Captain’s move mirrored mine as he took a step with me. I felt like I was being caged in, and as much as that should have terrified me, it didn’t. My head knew this was River. I couldn’t be scared of him. We had too much between us.

“For a moment. I had to make myself clear to the girl. My eyes went right back where I wanted them, but . . .” He paused, and his hand moved to brush his knuckles along the outside of my arm so softly it was like a whisper. “You wouldn’t look at me. I couldn’t concentrate. I’m not even sure what all I said to the staff. I just wanted your eyes on me. I didn’t like seeing you look at the floor. I wanted you to look at me.”

Oh my. OK. This wasn’t the man I was used to. This was not the man at the ice cream shop. Who the hell was this? And why was he making my heart beat so fast it was in danger of breaking through my chest at any moment? “I wasn’t expecting this,” I said, finally able to say something that made sense, that told him what I was feeling.

His gaze dropped to my mouth this time, and my knees buckled slightly. He looked hungry. Like he wanted to taste me. No, like he wanted me to be his last meal.

His large hands grabbed my waist. His touch was electric; I could feel the heat on my skin, even through my clothes. I might as well have been standing there naked.

“When I first saw you again, as Rose, I was unable to look away. No one had drawn me in like that. Not since . . . you. I didn’t like looking at you because you moved like my Addy. You laughed like my Addy. You were petite and feminine, so much like my Addy, and I didn’t want anyone around who reminded me of what I’d lost. I stayed away from anyone who reminded me of you in the slightest. But you were hard to ignore. I watched you more than I should have. I hated that you were calling to something inside me that I had reserved for one person. And then I find out that you are that person? You’re here, and it’s f*cking with my head, Addy.”

This was honesty. The kind of emotional honesty I hadn’t expected. I’d known who he was all along; he had been the one in the dark, yet he had sensed me. It was me he was drawn to, no matter how I presented myself.

“There was Elle,” I said simply, reminding myself as much as him. He might have sensed me, but it was Elle he had bent over his desk, in this very office.

His eyes clouded with regret. “She was a distraction. They’ve all been a distraction. There’ve been hundreds—I won’t lie to you. But I didn’t care for a single one of them. I never let them have me the way you had me. No one touched my soul, Addy. Only you.”

My skin heated at his words. I hadn’t slept with anyone since him. It had been ten years, and it was hard to believe, but I never wanted to be with anyone else. And until I loved again, I wasn’t giving that part of myself to someone. Being intimate with someone brought them into my life, and that meant Franny’s life. No one had ever been good enough.