Reflexively, the tip of my tongue darts out to wet my lips. Bennet’s eyes flash with intensity then quickly soften again.
“But you deserve to be paid attention to. And you don’t deserve to be lying on the ground in a pile of leaves when that’s happening.”
“Attention?” All the breath goes out of me.
“Yeah.” Electricity emanates off him, the likes of which I’ve never experienced. It’s unnerving and exhilarating, and it sends a throbbing sensation right to my core. “And I intend to give you a lot of my time,” he adds quietly.
Oh, God. Now I get it. The mere thought of his implication warms my body. I take a small step toward him.
“Stop,” he says, and I stop. My eyes go wide. Now what’s happening?
“A man should always come to a woman like you.”
And with that, he takes two long strides and scoops me into his arms, cradling me against his chest. He carries me toward his cottage as if I am weightless—up the steps from the sand to his deck. And he doesn’t lose his grip when he opens the sliding glass door and steps inside.
I should be terrified, but I’m not. I have confidence that Bennet will take care of me the way I need to be taken care of, and, though I hate to think of Andrew now, I know things could never be like this between the two us. Deep in the heart of me, in that place I’ve always hated to acknowledge, I know I would always be the one having to go to Andrew.
I might care deeply for him, but he could never hold me like Bennet is holding me. It would be impossible because I would never allow Andrew near that vulnerable side of me. Even at my lowest, when he helped me through the first months after Dad left, I never let him in. Not fully. Because something told me my weakness would push him away.
Now I know the beauty of letting someone see that tender spot. I barely know Bennet, but he sees it. He holds it. He tends to it.
I can’t take my eyes off his face—the way the light catches his blue eyes, the jagged scar by the corner of his eyebrow, the windblown tangles of his hair—but I still manage to get glimpses of the cottage: walls the color of wet sand, kitchen cupboards hanging open, shelves stocked with a dozen boxes of macaroni and cheese. Books are piled up in the corner of the room. Sunlight streams in ribbons through a kitchen window.
We move through a doorway into a smaller room with the same pale, knotty-pine floors. Three square windows are set high on the north wall. They’re open, allowing sheer white curtains to float gently in the early evening breeze.
In the middle of the room is a white featherbed—soft and billowy, it’s got to be ten inches thick—with a million white, fluffy pillows that would swallow me whole. Everything is soft and bright white and exactly how I imagine heaven. It’s perfect. He’s perfect, and he’s right.
“This is quite the…um…your bedroom looks like something out of a designer catalog.” It’s not the sexiest thing I could have come up with, but I can’t help it. His room is nothing like I would have imagined. I would have thought Sully O’Hare’s cottage would be decorated in a style that was more…I don’t know…old-man bachelor. More like Calloway’s.
Bennet smirks. “Too much?”
I shake my head.
His expression breaks into a grin. “Remember me telling you about the boat that I worked on? Well, after sleeping for years in a tiny berth, I guess I’ve developed a penchant for nice beds.”
I know what he said about going slow, but I have to check if the bed is as soft as it looks. I sit on the edge and press my hands down into it. I was right. Ten inches thick. Bennet sits, and I lie back. He stares for a second, then he settles himself beside me.
He combs a finger through my hair. “I wasn’t going to sleep in Sully’s lumpy old bed, so I bought this one. And before you ask, yes, you’re the only person besides me who’s ever been in it.”
I am not surprised, given what he’s told me about his social standing on Little Bear, but I am relieved. After two years on the island, perhaps this means he’s out of practice. Maybe it will