Page 113 of Make Mine Sweet
Across from me, Iris raises her hand. “That might be our fault.”
I look between the two of them. “Which part?”
Iris lifts her eyebrows at Steven as if that will jog his memory.
“What?” he says. “I didn’t say it to break them up. That’s just a fact.”
“What did you say to her?”
He spreads his hands wide. “The truth. That you’re coming back to Durango and the business as soon as possible.”
The women at the table groan over his obvious stupidity. Even I can see it, but as the one his stupidity devastated, that fits.
“What?” he says again. “This is just a short-term thing, right?”
Fleeing here started out that way, but nothing about it feels temporary anymore. Especially not how I feel about Tess.
“I know you like her,” he says. “But you’re not actually serious about a woman with a kid, are you?”
I bring my hand down hard on the table. “That ‘woman and her kid’ are everything to me.Everything.”
Silence rings in the room. I’ve said too much already, but I keep talking.
“Tess is all things sweet and soft and gentle. But if you cross the people she loves, she’ll make you regret it. She is sunlight on my skin. A warm embrace when I’m cold. She is laughter on my worst day. She’s a better woman than I deserve, and I want her anyway. HerandAugust, Steven. I want them both.”
They stare at me for a full five seconds. Yeah, I got a little poetic there. Love and rejection will do that to a guy.
“Ian.” Iris reaches across the table to where my hand still rests. “I know the plan was to come back to Colorado when you were ready…but you can always change the plan.”
“What?” Steven sputters. “That’s not what we’re?—”
“It’s your life,” Jodi says over him. “And I believe youdodeserve the love you want. Maybe even more so because you think you don’t.”
“It’s the shabby men who think they deserve it all who actually don’t,” Iris adds.
That shuts Steven’s mouth.
“Nobody deserves her,” I tell them. “Least of all me. And it’s not just about Colorado. It’s everything she’s too good to say. I’ve never had a relationship like this, never had anything close. The old me wouldn’t have wanted one.”
Then, I would have been stupid enough to walk away from her. Now, I want her more than anything, and she’s still slipping through my fingers.
“You keep saying you’re not the same man you used to be.” Amy’s steely gaze pierces me. “Maybe that’s true in more ways than one.”
“Do you love her?” Iris asks gently.
“Yes.” I would rather tell Tess before anyone at this table, but I can’t sit here and deny it. “It scares the hell out of me for all the ways I could ruin this, but yes. I love her.”
“Then don’t let her get away.”
“Are we just going to act like our business isn’t even in the picture?” Steven asks.
Iris shoots him a withering look. “Yes.”
“As long as I understand what’s going on,” he mutters.
“I’m pretty sure there’s this thing about accepting a woman’s ‘no’ the first time.” I’ve thought about knocking on Tess’s door fifty times a day since she rejected me. But I can’t barge my way into her life if she doesn’t want me there.
“I’m not talking about violating her trust,” Iris says. “I’m talking about earning it.”
