Page 56 of One More Sleepless Night

Nicky blinked and went still because he’d suddenly gone all dark and serious and it was doing crazy things to her pulse. ‘Everything?’

He nodded. ‘Everything. I do back off whenever the going gets tough.’

‘Oh.’

‘Yes.’ He rubbed a hand along his jaw but all that did was make her think about the times she’d run her hand along his jaw and how much she longed to do it again. ‘I’ve been thinking about it and I reckon I probably picked it up from my father.’

‘Your father?’

Rafael nodded. ‘It’s the way he deals with things. He’s an academic. Linguistics. Anyway, whenever things get too overwhelming he buries himself in his study with his books.’

‘I see,’ she said, although frankly she was struggling to see anything other than him.

‘And I have my roof terrace and my plants, my vineyard and my vines.’ He shoved his hands through his hair, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and cleared his throat. ‘Remember how I told you about the time when I stopped letting my sisters bother me?’

‘Vaguely,’ she said, because she wasn’t about to confess that she’d been over every conversation they’d ever had so often that at times she’d wanted to tear her hair out.

‘Well, before that, whenever things got too much I used to run to the end of the garden and take refuge there. It was my sanctuary. I used to—ah—talk to the trees and make up imaginary worlds where girls didn’t exist…’ He winced and she couldn’t help melting just that little bit more at the way he was going through with all this even though it was clearly mortifying him. Then he took a deep breath. ‘I guess growing up as the only boy among four sisters taught me that emotion is a weakness and one that can all too easily be exploited.’ He gave her a faint smile and her stupidly fragile heart squeezed. ‘Certainly boarding school didn’t change that perception and in the end I became adept at not giving a damn. I told myself that life’s a lot easier if you simply don’t care about things. About people.’

Nicky swallowed hard in an effort to suppress all the emotions that were about to spring free from their confines, but she had the feeling that she was losing the battle. ‘Sometimes you don’t have a choice.’

He stared at her intently, his eyes burning into hers. ‘No.’ And then he shrugged. ‘So there you have it,’ he said with a small self-deprecating smile. ‘I am an emotional coward. When you told me you loved me it spooked the hell out of me. I’d just realised that you made me feel things I’d never felt before and hadn’t ever wanted to. We’d just had that conversation about Marina and all I could think about was how dependent on me she’d become, how manipulative she’d been and how horribly it all ended. I reacted horrifically and for that there’s no excuse.’

And he sounded so flat, so bleak and resigned that suddenly everything she’d been trying to hold down spilled over. ‘No,’ she said fiercely, her heart racing and her throat aching. ‘I was wrong.’

‘You weren’t.’ He rubbed a hand over his face and then his entire body shuddered. ‘But, God, Nicky, I’m sorry for letting you leave like that.’

And when his hand dropped and she saw the tormented expression on his face, the anguish in his eyes and heard the raw honesty in his voice, Nicky felt what was left of her pseudo-steeliness crumble. ‘No, I’m sorry,’ she said, her voice croaky and shaky with the rush of emotion. ‘I should never have said any of it.’

‘Yes, you should.’ He raked his hands through his hair. ‘I needed to hear it.’

‘I was out of line.’

‘You had every reason to be.’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘You did.’ He stared at her, his eyes suddenly clear and focused absolutely on her. ‘You don’t back down from anything, do you?’ he said with what sounded like awed wonder. ‘You face everything head-on.’

Nicky swallowed down the lump that had suddenly lodged in her throat. ‘I’ve never seen the point of not doing that.’

‘You know, you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met.’ His expression softened and the look in his eyes made her heart lurch madly.

‘No, I’m not. I’m a mess. I can’t even bump into someone without going loopy.’ She unfolded her arms and gripped the edges of the desk just in case her knees actually did give way.

He began to walk towards her and with every step he took she became a little more breathless. ‘You’re beautiful.’

‘You’re insane,’ she murmured as he stopped just in front of her, overwhelming her senses and scattering her wits.

‘I’m certainly crazy about you.’

‘What?’ she breathed, her heart galloping and the awful tension inside her making her go a bit dizzy.

‘Nicky, I love you.’

And then the world shuddered to a halt and time stopped altogether because she’d wanted it so badly, had wanted so much for this to be why he’d come, and she’d tried so hard not to let herself hope, and now she didn’t have to.

‘Really?’ she said giddily.

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