“Fine,” he says, mock wounded. “But you will make this up to me.”
“Count on it,” I assure him.
He goes off happily in my Veyron that I have lent him to return at his earliest convenience.
“So?” Devon asks. “What’s the verdict?”
I turn to him with a big sigh. “Haven’t decided yet,” I say.
He narrows his eyes at me. “What aren’t you saying?” he asks.
He knows me so well. “CK said something earl
ier. It’s got my head in a tizz,” I admit.
Devon snorts cynically at that. “What a surprise,” he drawls. “Will you never learn?”
“What do you mean?” I ask with a huff.
“Lizzie, sweetie, that’s what he does. He messes with your head,” he whines. “Let me guess…he said something that makes you think he wants to be with you again, but it was so subtle you don’t really know, but most of you thinks he only said it because you told him about Cole?”
Damn him. Fucking astute bastard.
My face of thunder must say it all, as he backs off with his hands up, but when he gets to the stairs, he points to me and says, “Are you going to wait around for something that might never happen?”
He disappears up the stairs, two at a time, and I watch him go with a growing temper. No, I bloody well am not. Devon is absolutely right. CK is just messing with my head. Well, he isn’t going to get away with it. I pull out my phone and text him: “Telling Cole. Xx”
Almost immediately, it buzzes back: “If that is your wish, then so be it. Xoxo”
I frown at the screen, but if I was expecting anything else, I would be a fool.
CHAPTER NINE
A nother week has passed. Cole and I are going out for our third official date. I have decided that tonight is the night I am going to tell him. I don’t want him going anywhere and he doesn’t seem to want to either. I haven’t heard back from CK since his ‘so be it’ message, but I have to push that thought away. It will do me no good. CK is my past and Cole is my present. And hopefully also my future. I have sensed him about to tell me, more than once, that he loves me, but I have stopped him from saying it. I want to tell him about me first before we make such declarations. That way, if he rejects me, it might not hurt so much.
Well, that’s what I tell myself as I dress for dinner quietly and quickly. Cole is meeting me here to take us to dinner at 8 PM, and time is running out. My nerves are shot, and I jump a mile when Devon walks in. We have an open-door policy when it’s just the two of us, of course.
“Christ, Devon! You scared the crap out of me,” I snap.
My tone causes him to raise his eyebrows. “Jumpy, aren’t you? It’s interesting,” he adds, almost to himself.
“What’s interesting?” I ask.
“Seeing you this way. Nervous. I don’t think I ever have,” he says, slightly bewildered.
I smile a wistful smile. “No, I don’t suppose you have. It was the same with Fraser, even though I ended up having to blurt it out, but you weren’t with me then.” My heart clenches at the memory of Devon’s ‘rebellion’ during my time in the Scottish Rebellion. When I needed him most, he wasn’t there. He had left me in a fit of temper, and I didn’t see him again for fifty years. Our only time apart in five hundred and six years.
He looks away and I feel terrible for making him remember that too.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. I walk over to hug him, remembering how I feel with CK. Comforted.
“Don’t apologize,” he murmurs. “I wasn’t there, and I should have been.” He holds onto me like a lifeline. He pulls away first with a smile. “Okay, I’m going. Call me if you need me,” he says seriously, squeezing my hands.
I nod at him and say, “I will.”
He gives me what passes as a smile and leaves me alone.
I turn to the mirror and appraise myself. Black dress (of course), clingy in all the right places, and falling just above my knees. It’s the demurest thing I own. Nice and low key.