Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,179
was lying.
But there was no single logical reason he could think of why she would.
‘Right,’ he said, backing away. He glanced at his watch, not even seeing the face. ‘It’s late, so I should head back.’
He’d said what he’d come to say. He had bared his feelings for her as much as a simple cabinet maker without all that much experience in these matters could.
He’d brought her flowers, he’d thrown stones against her window, he’d told her that he’d thought of little but her since they’d met, he’d even felt himself lose a little bit of his soul to her when they had kissed.
But she didn’t want him.
A set of car lights hit them both, bathing Siena in a beam of light that showed her breathing was heavy, she clutched his roses to her chest so tightly her knuckles had gone white, her hair was a mass of curls and her lips were swollen from his kiss.
For a brief second his instincts told him that she loved him right back, but for some crazy reason was sending him away anyway. It took all of James’s strength not to haul her over his shoulder and drag her back to his place so he could spend the night showing her why she was wrong and he was right.
But then a fat drop of rain landed on the back of his neck. Followed by another and another. The storm had arrived and he had about twenty seconds to get back to the car before he would be drenched.
He took another step away and it felt as if he’d walked a mile. ‘Goodnight, Siena.’
He waited for her to give him something, to tell him why she had told Kane he was the greatest man she had known, to reciprocate his feelings, to grab him by the shirt-front with as much passion as she had only moments before.
But her lips did not move, even to tell him goodbye.
And, with that, he turned and walked away, his eyes blurred by more than the sudden driving rain.
Siena’s throat was clogged with fear and love and confusion and self-recrimination as she watched James run through the belting rain, get into his car and drive away.
She’d let him go. She’d actually been strong enough to let him go.
Well, she wasn’t going to get a minute of sleep that night so at least she had hours ahead of her to beat herself up about it.
The sudden tropical shower died enough for her to make a quick dash for the house. She kept running, up the stairs and into her room, where she threw herself on to her lumpy bed.
Her poor flowers looked even worse for wear than when he had given them to her. More had lost their petals and some had lost their heads completely. She didn’t blame them. She felt as though she’d lost hers days ago.
As she twirled them about she noticed there was a card attached. Curiosity got the better of her, as always, and she opened it to find a copy of the photo that had been taken of them on the Skyrail when they had smiled at the frog. He must have bought it on the sly when she’d been browsing in the gift shop for a present for the twins.
As she stared into the photo, in its silly rainforest-inspired cardboard frame, two single tears spilled from her misty eyes and down her hot cheeks.
In the photo she was leaning into James, smiling wider than she had ever known herself to smile. And James only had eyes for her.
CHAPTER TEN
ONE o’clock Saturday afternoon, Siena sat by Max’s pool in the same seat in which she had sat merely twenty-four hours before.
After sleeping not a wink the night before as she had stayed up finding a way through the fog to see what she really wanted her future to entail, the only thing keeping her awake was nervous tension.
‘So?’ Max said, watching her over the top of a Martini. ‘What will it be, Siena? Do you plan to continue rising to the top in taking the Rome position or are you going to be like the majority of my girls and let real life get in the way of a good thing?’
‘Neither, Max,’ Siena said, her voice sounding a heck of a lot stronger than she felt. She was about to take the biggest gamble of her life and she had no idea if she could pull it off.