Paris Is Always a Good Idea - Jenn McKinlay Page 0,97
of your exes. You need to find someone suited to who you are today.”
“Like you?” I scoffed.
“Yes,” he said. He reached out and pulled me close. “Exactly like me.”
Then he kissed me. His lips were warm and firm and fit perfectly against mine as he wooed me into responding to him and the scorching chemistry between us. He splayed his hand on my lower back and pulled me in high and tight, our bodies locking together like two puzzle pieces. His tongue teased the seam of my lips until they parted, and then he deepened the kiss and buried his hand in my hair to hold me steady while he wrecked me with his mouth, positively wrecked me.
The kiss was just as magical as the one atop the Eiffel Tower, perhaps even more so, because whether I wanted to admit it or not, Jason had come to mean something to me. He was more than a coworker; he was definitely a friend, and maybe—no. I stopped the thought.
Jason wasn’t who I wanted. He was connected to the Chelsea of my present. The cold, lonely, workaholic person I no longer wanted to be. I wanted the old Chelsea, the bighearted, wide-eyed woman of my youth, before my life had become a tragedy.
It took every bit of inner strength I possessed to break the kiss and pull away from him, but I did it. I pushed out of his embrace, putting some distance between us. I was out of breath, and my pulse was erratic. I felt as if I’d just run the Boston Marathon and I needed a bucket of ice or a fan to get my body temperature back down.
“You don’t understand,” I wheezed. “Seven years ago, I lost someone very dear to me to cancer. And afterward, in my grief, I lost myself.” I felt a hot tear streak down my cheek. “You can’t understand what it’s like if you haven’t suffered that sort of pain. It changes you. But I want to be that Chelsea again. I want to be the optimistic, happy, adventurous woman that I once was. I don’t want to be the emotionless zombie that I’ve become.”
He stared at me. “You’ve never been emotionless around me.”
“Rage doesn’t count.”
“Is that all you feel with me, really?”
“No,” I admitted. I scrambled to come up with a new definition for us that had built-in barriers. “I think we’ve become . . . friends.”
“Friends?” he asked. He laughed without humor. He shook his head. He stared past me, out the window, and then looked back. “Is that all we are?”
I saw the confusion and disappointment on his face, and I felt my throat get tight. How had everything gotten so complicated?
I met his gaze and held it, refusing to look away when I said, “That’s all I have to give you right now.” He looked so hurt and bewildered that I glanced away. “Listen, we just have to get through this dinner with Severin, and then we’ll go our separate ways. You’ll fly back to Boston, and I’ll press on to Italy.”
“It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. He spread his hands wide as if saying, Give me a chance. “You can come home with me, and we can figure out what this thing is between us.”
“No, I can’t,” I said. “I’m committed to going to Italy. If I don’t, I’ll always wonder what if, and I don’t want to live with that. Besides, for all I know, Severin is still planning to meet me at the wine festival, and I’ve already made plans.”
“With the guy in Italy?”
I nodded.
“So you’re willing to throw away something amazing, albeit unexpected, for a memory that may not live up to your expectation?” he asked.
“I have to,” I said. “Even if it wasn’t because I want to see my journey through to the end. I still have to be there to meet Severin. I promised Aidan.”
“He could send someone else.”
I stared at him, and I could tell by the flicker in his eyes that he knew that wasn’t true.
“You know how much is riding on this ask,” I said. “I have to go. Besides, you know the company policy against employees dating. Michelle in HR would love to fire one or both of us for violating the rules. You know that. This”—I paused to gesture between us—“puts everything at risk, especially because you are on company time right now.”
“We could fight it,” he said. “Rules are meant to be broken.”