department look bad. Wouldn’t look a whole heap better for your father if he let something happen to you, would it?’
She wasn’t trying to make anyone look bad. How could he not know that by now?
When the light changed and the last of the pedestrians on the crossing parted to make space for them to move forwards he surmised, ‘You didn’t think of it that way.’
‘I suppose that makes me selfish?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t think it’s selfish to want time to yourself—I get that’s what you were doing now. What I don’t get is the reason you’ve stuck it out for so long if you don’t enjoy it.’
Not true. ‘There are parts of it I enjoy—meeting people, going places, supporting worthwhile causes.’
‘So why not find a job that involves those things without the same restrictions?’
‘I intend to. But I made a promise to my brother.’
She blinked. Had she just said that out loud?
‘What kind of promise?’
That would be a yes, then. Briefly hiding behind the hand pretending to brush her hair into place, she checked to see how she felt about telling him. On a gut level it didn’t feel wrong but there was a limit to how much she could say without delving into her family history. ‘After abandoning him five days a week while I was at NYU I said I’d make sure he didn’t have to smile for the cameras until the next election—he’s due home the week before to help with the run-in. Win or lose, the plan was we’d make a stand together when he finished college.’
‘What changed?’
‘I did,’ she answered truthfully before lowering her chin. ‘I’ve never told anyone that. About the promise to my brother, I mean.’
‘What about Crystal?’
‘She wouldn’t get it.’
‘So why tell me?’
‘Because I think you do.’ Miranda lifted her chin and looked into his eyes as the traffic slowed. ‘Like I said not so long ago—no one speaks to me the way you do. Maybe I needed someone to be frank with me so I could learn how to do the same in return.’
‘If brutal honesty is what you need you’re never gonna have to worry you won’t get it from me.’
As much as it ruffled her feathers—particularly when he said something she didn’t want to hear—she liked that about him. It was refreshing. ‘You’re never gonna let me win an argument for the sake of keeping the peace either, are you?’
‘Nope,’ he answered succinctly as he focused on the road ahead. ‘And don’t ever take me on in a sport unless you plan on losing.’
It was too good an opportunity to miss. ‘Is there anything you’re not good at?’
‘Wouldn’t you like to know?’ he drawled.
When he turned his head the smile he flashed was so completely unexpected it stunned Miranda into silence. Enraptured by the sight she stared at the immediate change it brought to his face. His eyes were suddenly dozens of different shades of blue, the lines at the corners of his dense lashes deepening to give the impression there’d been a time in his life when he’d laughed often and loud. Added to the flash of pearly whites beneath the adorably crooked line of his lips, he wasn’t just handsome.
He was irresistible.
Miranda felt her body and heart sway towards him with the same impulse as a flower turning its petals to the sun. She was smiling back at him before she realized she was doing it, her chest expanding with warmth.
But like all good things the moment didn’t last.
When the SUV moved forwards again she decided it was probably just as well. She couldn’t get more attached to him than she already was. So long as everything they did was treated as nothing more than foreplay she’d be fine.
Until she’d lived a little, explored some and quelled the doubts she had about her capability to do something worthwhile with her life, she couldn’t so much as think about making a commitment to someone else.
Tyler Brannigan was a commitment kind of guy; twelve years on the job would have told her that even if he hadn’t made the comment about wearing a wedding ring. From that point of view she was glad there wasn’t any chance he would get more attached to her.
She just wished she knew why it made her feel so sad.
SEVENTEEN
A life that involved posing on a red carpet wasn’t one Tyler could ever see himself living. Considering the number of flashing cameras, it was a miracle she hadn’t gone blind.
Posting up