Her Man Friday(55)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

"That house would feel empty if you were entertaining the entire Arab Emirates," he said quietly. "It’s much too large."

"Yes," she agreed, turning her head into the soft sweep of his knuckles. "It is."

"I like places that are a bit smaller," he told her.

"Me, too."

"A bit more cozy."

"Yes."

"A bit more intimate."

"Mm-hm."

"Like my bedroom, for example."

"Ah."

"What do you say, Lily?" he asked. "Would you like to come up and see my etchings?"

She opened her eyes slowly, taking her time to focus on his face. What she saw there heartened her some—he seemed to be no less nervous about what was happening than she was—but the coil of anxiety threading through her still prevented her from acting too rashly. Regardless of how much she wanted to ignore her troublesome, rational mind.

"I… I…" She inhaled a deep breath and released it slowly. "I don’t know, Leo. This is just going so—"

"I like the way you say my name," he interjected. "And I like saying yours, too. Leo and Lily. Our names go together well, don’t they?"

She hesitated only a moment before responding, "Yes. They do."

"I wonder if our bodies will fit together as well."

A little explosion went off in her belly at the roughness that edged his voice when he said what he did. He wanted her. Perhaps even as much as she wanted him. But he was leaving it up to her, she thought. Somehow, she knew instinctively that whatever she said, whatever she decided, he would go along with it.

For one long moment, she remained silent, unsure what to say. She opened her hands over his chest again, pressing her fingertips into the soft fabric of his sweater, searching, she suddenly understood, for his heartbeat. When she found it, she felt it racing beneath her fingertips, and she realized that he really was every bit as frightened and uncertain as she was. Somehow, the knowledge made all the difference.

Tipping her head back, she gazed up into his face, then curved her palm over his rough jaw. And then, very, very quietly, she told him, "I guess there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?"

Chapter Fifteen

Leo’s bedroom upstairs was furnished in much the same way as the lower portion of his home, Lily noted as she preceded him into the room. Muted earth tones, clean lines on all the furnishings, few accessories. Clearly, he preferred for his surroundings to be uncluttered, minimal, tidy. It was something she’d already noticed about him when he was working at Ashling. Where Schuyler’s desk was normally piled high with all matter of unidentifiable refuse, Leo had always kept his things set well apart, and his things had always been stacked in an organized, orderly fashion.

She wondered suddenly if he felt the same way about his life, if he wanted to keep things organized and orderly there, too. If so, they could run into a few problems along the line, because Lily was by no means tidy and methodical in the way she went about doing things. Schuyler often wondered how she managed to keep everything together as well as she did, and he’d often remarked over the years how amazed he was that she’d run his life as well as she had. But Lily had a certain way of doing business, that was all. And that way just… worked.

Of course, her worries about a future with Leo might be completely unfounded anyway, because in worrying about such a thing, she was assuming the two of them had a future together. And that might not be the case at all. Not that Lily didn’t think they were compatible, because they most certainly seemed to be, in virtually every area—intellectually, emotionally, spiritually, sexually. But she’d always been of the opinion that for a relationship to succeed, then there had to be things like love and devotion, and fidelity and loyalty, and trust and honesty.

Love and devotion, she figured she could manage with little effort. In fact, she was finding it difficult not to fall in love with Leo, and the devotion part just naturally went along with that. Fidelity and loyalty, too, ought not to be a problem, because why would a woman be unfaithful or disloyal to a man like him, seeing as how there were no other men like him on the planet?

Trust and honesty, though…

Ah, there was the rub. Because not only was she growing more and more certain that Leo was misrepresenting himself for some reason—she just wished she could figure out why—but she knew that she was misrepresenting herself, too. There was so much he didn’t know about her. So much that, should he find out, he may very well never want to speak to her again. There were things in life that she had done, that she continued to do still, that were, at best, unethical. And if Leo found out about those activities, if he knew for sure what she had been doing, what she continued to do to this day, and if he realized she had been keeping the truth from him…

Well, then a future with him might very well be impossible. He seemed to be a man who saw everything in terms of black and white. And he seemed to be a man who demanded honesty from an individual, first and foremost. To try to justify to him the actions she’d performed that, although certainly orchestrated for good, decent reasons, were still pretty much unethical, and to try to explain why she had lied about it from the beginning, would be like trying to talk a policeman out of giving her a speeding ticket because she was taking a sick cat to the vet.

No, actually, it would be more difficult than that, she had to concede. Because Leo was like Schuyler in that, although he would certainly see the need to hasten an ailing pet to the doctor, he wouldn’t be able to understand why Lily wanted—needed… had—to do the things she did.

When she heard the soft snick of the door latch behind her, the small burst of confidence she’d felt downstairs only moments ago fled. The good news was that in doing so, it took her distressing thoughts with it. The bad news was that, in doing so, it left Lily with only her instincts to guide her. And her instincts, although they always strove to do the right thing, had often led her into trouble.

She spun around to face Leo, crossing her arms over her torso in what she feared he might misinterpret as a defensive act. Then she wondered if such a thing would be a misinterpretation at all. But all he did was stand as he had stood at the front door only moments ago, leaning back against the door with his hands behind him, gazing at her with a look of unmistakable, but uncertain, desire.

"This suddenly feels very contrived," she said, blurting out the first thought that jumped into her head.

He seemed surprised by her statement. "Why? To me, it feels like something that’s been a long time in coming. Something that’s way overdue."