His Irresistible Darling - Sarah Randall Page 0,87

me tonight; just stay another night,” he all but begged.

The same hurt look he’d seen a moment earlier clouded her features for a second before she shook her head. “I can’t. I told you I need to go back to my apartment and pack and spend some time with Melina.” She dropped her head back down and he pulled her close again.

“Jumal—” She tried to pull away from him.

“Just wait,” he begged into the soft waves of her hair. He pulled her slight frame tighter into his body. His head whirled with conflicting thoughts: tell her how he felt or preserve his self-respect and heart?

He finally let some air in between their bodies and pulled back slightly, dropping a soft kiss to her partially opened lips. Where those tears in her eyes?

“Pippa—” He took a deep breath, not yet knowing what words were about to spill from his lips. Stay with me; stay here with me for ever. Don’t go. Her eyes widened and her pupils dilated. “I, er—” But she dropped her eyes to the floor and the sudden loss of eye contact interrupted his proposed admission, and what ended up coming from his lips was, “I’ll miss you.”

Pip was proud of the fact that she’d made it into her car before the hot tears spilled down to her cheeks and that she’d insisted on Jumal staying in the apartment, knowing what was about to come. She dropped her head against the steering wheel and sobbed. She was annoyed at him for letting her go. Fool. But she was just as annoyed at herself for letting him weave his way into her head and heart and for making her believe for just a moment when he’d crushed her to his chest that he wanted more than just the fling, that they had some permanence and he’d felt just a sliver of what she felt for him. Idiot.

All out of tissues, she resorted to sniffing and rubbing her eyes with the bottom of her T-shirt, ignoring the mascara stains.

Finally he saw her car drive away. He’d been about to go down to see if there was another problem with it before he saw the lights come on.

He shut the sliding balcony doors behind him and leant his body back against the cool glass. He closed his eyes and his senses were flooded by Pippa’s scent, which lingered in the living room. He finally opened his eyes and surveyed his apartment. It no longer felt like his home, if it ever had. It felt empty, lifeless, like it had before Pippa had flounced into his life. He dropped his head back against the door. Crap. He’d so nearly told her how he felt. I love you, Pippa, had been balanced tentatively on the tip of his tongue but he knew it wasn’t fair; he couldn’t just blurt it out as she was about to leave the country to return to her life in England.

She’d want and demand exhilaration, fun and spontaneity from a partner—not a fast-approaching middle age boring businessman. Christ, she’d have likely laughed at him or worse—pitied him before politely rejecting him. She didn’t need him. Other women had always needed something from him: his wealth, his body or, like Faridah, the social standing that came with his family name. Pippa—she needed nothing. She had her own money, her own self-confidence, and even if she did care about such things as family names and social standing, she had her own respected heritage back in England where suitors would no doubt come a calling as soon as she landed. His teeth ground together as his fists clenched but he quickly released his grip on her present.

He forced his eyes to open and pushed away from the door. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been standing there but it was now getting dark outside. He scanned the living room and lounge area. Silence was his only companion now. No music, no yodelling or whatever it was she sang along to. Everywhere reminded him of Pippa: playing snap on the floor in front of the fire because it was the only card game that she knew and he could play one handed, coming home and finding her balancing on her head in some weird yoga position and desperately trying not to pounce on her, her running through the apartment in her belly-dancing outfit yelling at him that she couldn’t find her car keys and that she was going to be late picking