Page 22 of You Had Me At Valentine

His laugh is soft. “Pretending is the last thing I want to do.”

We eat in comfortable silence for a moment, but I can feel him watching me. The pendant feels warm against my skin, a reminder that whatever is happening between us now started long before tonight.

I want to trust that, trusthim. But there are a lot of things unsaid between us.

“Why did you keep it?” I ask finally. “The necklace?”

He sets down his chopsticks. “Why did you keep the photo?”

“That’s not an answer.”

“Isn’t it?” His eyes meet mine. “Some things are worth holding onto. Even when you think you’ll never get another chance.”

My heart does this weird floppy thing. “Is that what this is? What you want?”

“I’m not sure it’s up to me. Or I have the right to want anything.”

He’s saying the ball is in my court and that it should be. I sit with that for a minute. Do I have the power here?

He’s still watching me carefully. “If you want it to be a second chance, there’s a lot we’d have to talk about.”

The pendant.

The past.

This is what I was angling for. The real reason he kept the pendant. Suddenly I’m not so sure this is a conversational path I want to go down.

Because what is there to talk about? Unless I don’t know everything there is to know.

Carefully, I study him. “What would you like to say?”

“I still work for your father.”

AKAnotwhat I was expecting him to lead with. “And dating me again is a conflict of interest?”

“It’s a complexity,” he says after a beat. “What’s going to happen between us if I ultimately end up having to sell the inn?”

“You just said the Valentine’s Party is going to work!”

The sudden seriousness of this conversation weighs down my fork until I have to set it beside my plate.

“I said it’s your best shot,” he corrects gently. “Which is not the same thing as a guarantee.”

I eye him and his double-talk mouth. “You could convince my father not to sell. He’ll listen to you.”

Byron shakes his head. “I already told him my thoughts about this whole situation and he chose to go forward with the sale. I have far less sway than you seem to think.”

That makes two of us. I cross my arms, not caring that it probably looks like I’m pouting. “I’m still not sure what this has to do with whether or not you’re going to kiss me the next time there’s an engraved invitation in your hand.”

That puts a hitch in the stride of Mr. Calm Cool and Collected. “You gave me an invitation to kiss you?”

I roll my eyes. “We were dancing. It was romantic. I thought the invitation was implied.”

“Noted.”

His voice sounds a little strangled, as if he’s having trouble getting out the words. Because I affected him?

I did. His gaze burns into mine as he swallows. Twice.

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