Page 198 of Charming Deception

I roll on top of her and kiss her little frown. Twice. Three times. Both corners, then the middle.

“You’re going somewhere,” I clarify. “With or without me. Can’t you see that? You don’t need me, Megan.” I say all this while I crush her with my body, trapping her. Because I’m so damn scared she’ll say, You know what, you’re right. See ya.

“I never said I did.” Her face softens and her frown melts away. “I said I want you.”

I shake my head slowly, smoothing her hair back from her face and looking deep into her gorgeous amber eyes in the moonlight. “I want to give you back the opportunity I took away,” I tell her solemnly. Because at this point, fucking millions or even billions aside, I know it’s the best thing I can ever give her. The most important thing.

And I don’t want to wait until a year’s up to do it.

I need to know. Now. Is she in or is she out?

“What opportunity?”

“To decide the life you want.”

“What, this life? You seriously think I’d come back here?”

I force the words out. “I don’t know.”

“And you’d let me do that? I thought you wanted me out of Crooks Creek,” she says softly. “You know, Frodo?”

“I do.”

“I thought… maybe… you loved me,” she says, even softer.

I do. Jesus Christ, I do.

But for a long minute I can’t answer. My heart is beating too hard, way up in the knot in my throat.

I take a deep breath, gathering my words. In the thudding silence, I can really feel how drunk I am. So drunk, I can’t be expected to make sense, maybe.

But I know this much is true.

“I’m saying this because I love you. Imagine you never met me, Megan. What is the life you want?”

She stares up into my eyes as we breathe together.

Then she says the best thing she could ever say to me. Something so good, I never actually imagined her saying it.

“No, Jameson,” she breathes. “I don’t want to imagine a life without you.”

Chapter 44

Megan

“You’re kidding me.” Nicole literally shoves popcorn in her mouth as she listens raptly to my retelling of how Jameson came to Crooks Creek and served up my ex-boyfriend’s ass to him on a platter. “He did that?”

“He did that. Then he screwed me in my old bedroom and all the way home on his private plane.”

“I’m in lust. You know, vicariously.”

I sigh. “I’m in love.”

“God.”

We both stuff our mouths with popcorn and chew for a long minute. That’s the first time, since I realized it was true, that I said those words out loud.

And I realized it quite a while ago, really.

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