The Earl's Outrageous Lover Page 0,36
never cowered from his responsibilities so why was he not knocking on the woman’s door instead of bracing himself to see her? Because he wasn’t sure what she’d thought about last night, he told himself. She was mercurial to say the least and he wasn’t sure what to think, what to expect.
Which was definitely part of her allure, he thought with a slight smile.
He was being ridiculous, he told himself and forced his hand to reach up and knock. It was instantly opened and Edward glared down at a smiling face, Jessica’s chocolate brown eyes ignoring his anger as she pulled on a sweater due to the cooler weather today.
“All ready,” she said and stepped around him.
Edward turned and watched her bounce down the stairs, his eyes hungrily taking in her sexy figure in the tight jeans that hugged her round derriere and long legs. The leather boots came up over her calves, ending just above her knees in the front and made her legs look even longer somehow. He had no idea what color shirt she wore because her cream sweater covered it up, but he suspected it would be something that perfectly suited those expressive eyes of hers. She always wore colors that made her look soft and luscious. The woman definitely knew how to play her features to their best advantage with a daring sense of style and flair. He’d never dated a woman who could pull off wearing knee high boots before, but he found that he liked it.
They drove a short distance to a small restaurant with only about fifteen tables that he knew served excellent food with relatively good privacy. He didn’t really want others to overhear this conversation. The brick walls of the converted courtyard gave the tables a sense of old-world style and coziness while the sun created a dappled pattern over the tables.
Once they’d ordered, Edward sat back in his chair and looked across the table at the lovely young woman who had been placed into his charge. He watched her carefully while he said, “Jessica, I’m sorry about last night. It never should have happened, but now that it has, we need to deal with the consequences.”
Jessica blinked, barely breathing as the pain of his comment struck her right in the heart. “You’re sorry?” she whispered, suddenly fighting back tears.
He sighed and leaned forward. “Yes. I was supposed to be helping you and last night…well, I obviously wasn’t much help, was I?”
She didn’t want to talk about his obligations. She wanted him to tell her how much last night meant to him, that he wanted to do it again and again. She wanted him to tell her that he was in love with her.
Okay, so that last one was a bit too much to ask, but the other desires were completely reasonable, she thought.
What she didn’t want was to sit across this lovely table and have him tell her that he regretted what they’d done. It was bad enough that he’d left her this morning without even a goodbye, but to say that he was sorry?! That was beyond horrible!
Jessica blinked hard and turned away. She wanted to scream at him, lash out to give him the same kind of pain she was feeling, but that wasn’t fair. Of course, the big question was, did she want to be fair? She thought about it for a long moment, then sighed inwardly. It wasn’t Edward’s fault that she was now having trouble separating a physical attraction from the emotional ramifications of that attraction. She should know better, but she’d fallen into the same trap as so many other women had over time.
“Last night was a one off, I suppose,” she said and looked at the brick wall behind him, desperate to not embarrass herself by breaking down into ridiculous girly tears over the incident. When she’d started thinking about last night as an ‘incident’ was a mystery, but she grasped onto that as her escape. “We should just move on and pretend like last night didn’t happen.”
Edward’s eyes narrowed. Something in the way she was sitting so still, the way her eyes looked abnormally bright, was telling him that she didn’t really feel that way. “Jessica, last night…” he started to say, but Jessica interrupted him.
“I know, it was pretty good. But I still have that deadline, right?” she said, trying to anticipate his words and get them said herself. Somehow, coming from her mouth, they weren’t so hurtful.
“That wasn’t what