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I go up on my toes and kiss him softly. “Ryder, I’m trying to say I’m not expecting anything from you. But I want you to know I appreciate you.” The words of love are there, but I’m not letting them out. And whatever happens, I need to tell him this. Then I can go. No matter what this hope inside thinks. “I get some people just see the surface. Gorgeous rich man and nothing else. Not me.”
“You see the monster?”
“You’re an idiot. No, I see you. You like beautiful things, but you understand them. You saw what my plants are with me, and with my art deco furniture, you know what it is, the beauty side of old things that are loved. You appreciate not the monetary value but the aesthetics and that’s rare.”
“I appreciate you, Elliot. More than you know,” he says quietly.
“I’m not beautiful or anything—”
“You are,” he says, releasing me and taking my hand, bringing it to his lips and pressing a kiss against my palm. “You’re beautiful and sexy and you’re the hottest thing I’ve met. I can talk with you. I can tell you anything. I can just relax with you.”
And yet, he doesn’t tell me what I long to hear and maybe he doesn’t feel how I do. Maybe he—
“I love you, Elliot.”
He’s shaking and I start, too.
“I’ve never said that to anyone before, outside family. I’ve never loved before and I think I might have for a long time, I just went about it wrong. I mean, it takes a bit to work out what the complicated thing you’re feeling is. At least for me. And you don’t need to love me back. You can walk out the door, because I sure as fuck don’t deserve you. Will I try and stop you? Yes. Will I try and wear you down and win you and spend a life taking whatever I can get with you? Absolutely.”
Ryder meets my gaze. “Basically, I’m trying to say I’m head over heels in love with you, and I don’t want anyone but you. I love you.”
“Really?” The hope is back swooping, flying singing and my heart is so full and big and I can’t stop the sudden wild happiness from spilling inside.
“Yes.”
I start to cry. Not sobs, but tears definitely fall and I can’t help it. I know what those other tears were now. Pure hope and that’s morphed right into happy. “You love me?”
“With everything I am.”
“I love you, too. I am so in love with you I make myself sick.”
“I know you don’t trust me, but—”
“I trust you, Ryder.”
“Even when I don’t trust myself?”
“Don’t push it,” I say, looping my arms around his neck. “That’s fear. You’re your number one fan, you do trust yourself. You just were finding your feet and you never did anything. You had a naked woman begging to sleep with you.”
“She wasn’t you.” He kisses me soft and slow and sweet and then looks at me, a wicked light in his eyes. “Or maybe I’m lying.”
“No. I know your tells.”
“Really?”
“I’ll never tell.”
I kiss him again and he holds me tight, kissing me back like I’m the most precious thing in his life. “You know, you’re worth more than the company and the necklace. Without you, it’s empty.”
A Spice Girls song starts and he reluctantly pulls free. “My mother.”
He waits for the phone to stop ringing. Then when it beeps, he listens to the voicemail. Ryder hangs up and shoves his phone away. “Holy fucking hell, Elliot. That was her congratulating me and her saying if I don’t seal the deal with the best thing that’s happened to me—you—I’m in trouble, but Kingston’s piece is missing. She has the necklace but the last piece and his quest are gone; not that I trust her or Jenson in this. My brother is not going to be happy. But this is in King’s hands now. Oh no.”
“What?” The look of annoyance on his face twists in me.
“I’m going to have to introduce you to my family.”
“You don’t have to.”
