Page 70 of An Honorable Deception
“I don’t know. Something about how she must think I was no danger to her heart, and how insulting that was.”
His sister’s eyes slid shut for a moment. “And she said?”
“Sheagreed.” He spread his hands, let them fall. Traced a line of birds with his gaze. “Case closed.”
“You stupid man.”
“What?” His eyes snapped back to her.
She was shaking her head slowly. “Whenyousay you’re no danger to her heart, you mean...?”
He narrowed his eyes. “I mean what it means—that if she’snotrunning away from me, it’s because she knows she’ll never love me. And that’s not what I want from arelationship, Marigold, you know that. I want what you have—what Mother and Father had. I want—”
“Yates!” Now she looked like the big sister trying to explain why it was a bad idea to try the highwire for the first time without a net below to catch him when he fell. “Lavinia knows very well what you want from a relationship. Do you honestly think she’d have taken what would be a terrifying step for her if she didn’t think she couldgiveyou that?”
“She admitted as much. Sheagreed.”
“No, sheagreedthat you were nodangerto her.” She closed her eyes, gave a small shake of her head.Exactlylike she had when he’d tried to insist that a net would make him overconfident and sloppy. “Because shetrustsyou, Yates. Because of all the men in this world, you are the only one she feels like she knows. The only one she can let herself love, it seems.”
“She didnotsay that.”
“Probably because you followed your claim of insult with a proud reminder that you weren’t in love with her anymore.”
Annoying. It was completely annoying that she knew him so well. And quite suddenly he had no desire to know when Lavinia and Xavier got back. He swung his legs over to the ladder. “Since when are you on her side in this, anyway? You’re supposed to be defending my fragile heart.”
He put a foot to the ladder, grabbed a rung.
She was right there, on the opposite side. “Thisisyour side! Are you so soft in the head you don’t understand what I’m saying? She. Loves. You.Thatis the only conclusion that fits the evidence.”
“I’m going to revoke your investigator’s license.” He moved down, knowing once he reached the ground, he couldoutpace her.Thank you, niece or nephew. “Because that conclusion is absurd.”
“What’s absurd is that you’re running from the thing you always wanted most in the world!”
Who needed a ladder, anyway? He jumped the last six feet, knees bending to cushion his landing. “Didwant. Years ago. Not now.”
“Yates.” She didn’t jump, but she didn’t need to. She was quick as Penelope, even with the baby.
He spun to face her, the fury pounding at him not so different as it had been that morning in the stables. “I did the work, Marigold!Hardwork. I got over her. My broken heart healed. I’ve watched a parade of men come through ready to court her, and I didn’t so much as flinch.” Well. Not often, anyway. “I do not love her anymore, not like that.”
She arched a lofty, know-it-all brow. “Even if she loves you?”
She doesn’t. That was what he was ready to claim. Because she couldn’t. She never had. She had spent their childhood taking his preference for granted, their adolescence turning her nose up at him, and then she’d let him kiss her when they were seventeen just so she could walk away and finally drive home the thing she’d been saying all along.
She didn’t want him. He wasn’t good enough for her. He could offer her his heart, and she’d take it from his hands and dash it on the rocks.
He wasn’t arrogant—but he wasn’t self-deprecating either. He knew he could makesomeonehappy, even given the state of his coffers.Someonecould love him. Lavinia couldn’t, but that didn’t mean no one would.
Marigold took a step closer, brows even but the challenge still in her eyes. “Look past the scar, Yates. Consider for amoment that shecould. That she does. Look at who she is now, not who she once was.”
He didn’t want to, but that would be unfair. He knew very well she wasn’t the same girl she’d been. She was so much more mature, so much deeper. So much more aware of other people and the world, so selfless and humble.
“Consider that I’m right. Then what?”
He tried to swallow, but his throat wouldn’t work. His answer came out as little more than a croak. “I don’t know.”
Because he’d moved on with his life. With his heart. Hadn’t he? He’d finally met someone he thought he might well be able to fall in love with. And that quick punch of jealousy whenever Xavier got that look in his eye meant it was serious, didn’t it? That the feelings for Alethia were real. Or they could be, given time enough to develop.
Though he could admit he’d been none too pleased by the idea of X taking Vin to London either. That hadn’t been jealousy, though, had it? It had been concern for her safety. Because she was his friend.Thatwas how he loved her.
