Page 116 of Holding On To Good

There was a beat of stunned silence, then her words sank in.

Her meaning.

She braced for his anger. Anger she could handle. Especially when she deserved it.

What she got instead was disappointment. And that killed her.

She’d let him down. He’d expected more of her. Expected her to be better. Braver.

She knew how he felt. At one time she’d had expectations of him, too.

Then she learned better.

“You asked him,” Urban said.

It wasn’t a question. She answered it anyway. “Yes.”

“Why?”

Because none of this was real! Couldn’t he see that? Yes, their kiss was long overdue, but it wasn’t a precursor of things to come.

It was a completion of what they’d started all those years ago.

But his why wasn’t so much a question as a dare. A chance for her to admit out loud what he already suspected.

Doomed to disappointment yet again.

“Why?” she repeated. “Because he’s handsome and interesting and kind, and I thought it would be fun to get to know him better.”

All true. Well, except for the last part. Fun hadn’t really entered into the equation. It couldn’t. There’d been no room, what with self-preservation, fear and desperation taking up all the space.

“Tell him you changed your mind.”

The order—and it was an order, despite how softly it’d been delivered—should have ticked her off. Instead, it shook her.

Because she was tempted to obey.

Beneath Urban’s anger and disappointment, she sensed something else. Something deeper and infinitely more powerful. More dangerous.

She’d hurt him.

And that was the last thing she ever wanted to do.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

He looked down and when he raised his gaze back to her, she saw the resolve in his eyes. The same determination that had gotten him through the deaths of his parents, the loss of his fiancée, and the life he’d had planned.

Urban Jennings was a man who didn’t back down. Not when he’d set his mind on something.

It was inconceivable to think that after all these years, he’d set his mind on her.

“One kiss wasn’t enough,” he murmured. “It wasn’t nearly enough for me.”

His gaze lingered on her mouth and she felt her pulse there, in her lips. A want, a need, beat, beat, beating in time with her heart. It was like a dream. The day brightened, as if the sky had absorbed the sun, the very air turning a brilliant hue of green.

He moved closer, the sun behind him, casting him in a warm glow as he bent his head toward her bringing with him the scent of his aftershave and memories of how he’d done the exact same thing right before he’d kissed her.

“Willow,” he said softly, his voice a velvety rasp, “what are you so afraid of?”

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