Page 39 of Suddenly Tempted
“Well, can I say I hated you a little bit?” she said.
Devlin turned that thought over in his head and decided he didn’t like it.
“Did you?” he asked. “Hate me, I mean?”
Darcy didn’t reply, not feeling the need to placate him, maybe. And when she did reply, her answer surprised him.
“Perhaps,” she said.
They sat there in silence for a moment, the wind howling, fistfuls of snow hitting the windows like grit.
“Just perhaps? I thought I was the most awful man you’d ever met,” he said, his lips tugging into a smile.
“Oh, you were,” she replied, a little too quickly. “Are . . . Without a doubt. But . . . but at the same time, you’re not. I’m still trying to figure out which one is the real you.”
This one, he thought, although the truth was he was still trying to figure it out too.
“Do you want to know what I really think?” she said.
He looked at her, and she leaned into him, bringing a scent of coconut shampoo and something a little more dangerous. She was close enough to touch, close enough to kiss, and the thought of it was so loud inside his head that he almost didn’t hear her when she started talking again.
“I think you’re like a frozen lake,” she said. “Back in Wisconsin everything used to freeze over in winter. We lived a way out of the city, and the farms around us all had lakes that would freeze solid. At least, you thought they were solid. We used to skate on them. I remember one time one of our neighbours even rode their truck on the ice, it was that thick. When I was a kid, we used to think there was nothing in those lakes but ice.”
She paused, obviously thinking back to her childhood. It sounded happy, he thought. It sounded a world away from his own.
“Then one day we were out on the ice and I saw something moving beneath it. I couldn’t believe it, these little flashes of colour darting in the dark. They were fish, and I couldn’t understand how they were alive in the ice. I asked my dad and he just smiled at me. He told me the water doesn’t freeze all the way down, there’s this little core of heat that keeps it liquid. He told me that the ice actually insulates the water, keeping those little fish alive in the winter, stopping them from being picked off by predators too.”
“You’re saying I’m a fish?” Devlin said, smiling.
“No,” she replied. “I’m saying you’re a lake.”
“I’m not sure if that’s any better.”
She laughed, the sound like a playlist of his favourite songs.
“You had a bad run of things when you were younger,” she said. “At least, that’s what it sounds like. You went through some cold, dark times, and you froze over. That’s what the world sees now, this cold, unfeeling guy frozen inside his own never-ending winter. People don’t like you because you make them feel cold.”
“People do like me,” he said, but his voice was quiet.
“People like theideaof you,” she went on. “And I’m not saying this because I want you to feel bad. I’m saying it because I think it might help you. You’re frozen, but you’re not frozen solid. There’s something in those depths — I can see those little flashes of colour darting in the dark. You’re still in there, Devlin, and that ice is keeping you safe, keeping you warm.”
He thought about this for a while, chewing on her words.
“If that’s the case,” he said eventually, pulling away from the heat of her. “Then isn’t it best to stay cold, stay frozen for ever?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Because if you do that, then it will be the end of you. Those lakes thawed every spring, and those fish went on to live their lives. The really cold years, when the water stayed frozen for month after month after month, those poor creatures suffocated. The ice killed them.”
Devlin took a deep, shaky breath.
“How did you get so wise?” he asked.
She shrugged.
“I don’t know. I just lived, I guess.” A tiny laugh escaped her. “Not that I’ve really done much living.”
“Hey, that’s not true,” Devlin said, angling his body towards her. “You’re an American girl living in Europe. What’s that if it’s not an adventure?”
“It’s less exciting than it sounds,” she said, sighing. “I was an idiot for coming here. It was a job, one that sounded too good to be true. Itwastoo good to be true. It was a brand-new company set up to help promote women’s businesses, to help give women the confidence to set up on their own, to do something amazing.”
