Emma Richmond - A Husband For Christmas

Touching her shoulder, he gently turned her. ‘Yes, you can. Please. I know I’m hurting you... Dear God, Gellis, what sort of a bastard was I to make you hurt so much?’

‘I don’t know!’ she cried. ‘That’s what I find so hard! That’s what hurts so! I didn’t know! I thought you were so special, so different, and all the time...’ Closing her eyes tight, she took a deep breath. ‘I’m sorry. But I find this so hard.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed emptily. ‘You think I was living a lie? Pretending to love you?’

‘Yes,’ she agreed painfully.

‘But why?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t know why anyone would do that. Or perhaps you did love me,’ she added softly. ‘Certainly that would be less hurtful to believe—and then maybe you got cold feet, felt trapped. I don’t know, Sébastien, but whatever the reasons it was a coward’s way out to write me a note.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed grimly.

‘And yet I wouldn’t ever have said you were a coward.’

‘And so it goes round and round in your mind, with no answers. Just like mine.’

‘Yes,’ she said with a small attempt at a smile.

‘And I don’t think smiling at me is a very good idea,’ he reproved her with ironic humour. ‘I’ve been celibate for four months at least. And I don’t think celibacy is my natural inclination.’

‘No,’ she said awkwardly, her face pink.

‘Go on. What did I whisper?’

‘Suggestions.’

‘Suggestions? What sort of suggestions?’

With an embarrassed shrug, she murmured, ‘Erotic.’

‘Erotic?’

‘Yes.’

A sudden glimmer of amusement in his eyes, he asked, ‘And then what?’

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