Page 78 of The Honest Affair

Chapter Nineteen

Nina

And there it was. The promise he had made before, the one that hung in the air, suspended like particles of dust, turned golden not by the setting sun but by the rich hue of promise.

Even the light in this country seemed different. In New York, everything was so cold, blue and gray the way the light bounced off skyscraper and sidewalk. But here, with only the warm stone and terracotta to reflect the world around us, even the air seemed cast in gold.

For the rest of my life. And, he seemed to infer, for the rest of mine. If that’s what I wanted.

Reluctantly, I pressed my hands to his chest.

“Wait,” I whispered. “Wait, Matthew. Please. Stop.”

His mouth paused, hovering just above the fabric guarding my breast. A muscle in his jaw ticced, but he straightened, worry flashing through the desire in his deep green eyes. He wanted me, yes. It was evident in the way his hands couldn’t quite let go of my slip, the way his breathing was just a bit labored. But the truth was clear.

I’m no saint, he had insisted. I almost smiled. How wrong he was. When it really mattered, Matthew was as patient as a saint.

“What is it?” he asked, his voice hoarse with want. “Still too…too soon?” He almost sounded afraid of the answer.

I pushed back a stray lock of his silky dark hair. “No, it’s not that. I…”

I could feel his need pressed against me and wondered if he felt it pulsing through my entire body as well. Wondered if he could feel my own and the way it made me tremble in front of him.

But something else was still between us.

That word again.

The secrets that drove every fear I had.

I wanted them gone. I wanted him to help me chase it away forever.

“Please,” Matthew interrupted my brooding. “I can’t take this anymore.”

“Can’t take what?” I asked.

“This fear. I know you feel like you can’t trust me, Nina. I know I fucked up last summer. But I swear to God, my job, my house, it doesn’t fucking matter if we’re not together. This is all I want. You are all I want.”

My stomach twisted. So many women fantasized about moments like these, when a man would give up the world just to be with them. But I found I didn’t want to cost Matthew the world. I hated that I had cost him anything at all.

“Oh, no, that’s not—Matthew, I—”

“I have something for you,” he said suddenly. “Don’t move.”

I watched as he went to his shoulder bag and rooted around for a moment. He returned with something cradled in his palm.

“This isn’t the way I wanted to do this,” he said quietly, almost to himself.

I frowned. “Do what?”

For a moment, he only blinked at me, his eyes large, green pools of love and apprehension.

“Matthew,” I tried again, more gently this time. “Do what?”

“I imagined bringing you up to the top of the Empire State Building. Like we were Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr, but we actually made it up there in the end.”

I smiled. His sisters were really right about him—their brother had a terrible romance with old movies. I had never told him how many of them I had watched alone in my room, not because I was particularly fond of black-and-white cinema or the stunted dialogue, but because they made me feel closer to him during all those months when I never believed I could be.

Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant…it was a reference to An Affair to Remember. A film I had actually seen. One where the two characters, both involved with others, meet on a steamer on its way to New York. And at the end of their journey, they promise to meet at the top of the Empire State Building to start their lives together. In six months, they said, if they still felt the same, if they could make themselves worthy of each other, there they would go.

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