Page 32 of Clashing Moon
“You read my mind.”
He poured us each a glass and sat on the couch. “Mama and Pop are putting everything away. Are you hungry at all?” He gestured toward the uneaten plate of ham and cheese sandwiches he’d dropped off earlier. “You haven’t eaten anything. You need to keep your strength up.”
I didn’t feel like eating, but to take that anxious expression from his face, I reached for one and took a bite. He did the same, washing it down with a swallow of wine.
“What can I do?” Rafferty asked. “Ask me for anything. Whatever it is you need, I’m here.”
“Kiss me.”
What had I just said?
Rafferty’s eyes widened, and he went slightly pale. “Kiss. You?”
“That’s what I said.”
8
RAFFERTY
If I hadn’t heard it with my ears, I’d have never believed it. Arabella Collins had just asked me to kiss her. I sat stunned for, I don’t know how many seconds, staring at her, my heart pounding hard in my chest.
“We’ve already spent the night together, so why not?” Arabella asked, clearly trying to make light of her request.
But I didn’t want her to pretend it was nothing. A throwaway. A joke. I wanted to believe it was true. Arabella wanted me to kiss her.
And I wanted to. Desperately. The feel of holding her in my arms during our night in the cabin had worked its way permanently into my nervous system. Or perhaps tattooed into every inch of my skin?
I scooted to the edge of the couch, cupping my hands under my chin, trying to think of what to say. Or do. Arabella snuggled into one corner of my mother’s sectional and gazed down into her lap. She’d discarded the tall black boots she’d worn to the burial and sat with her bare legs folded beneath her. A black knit dress showed off her slender figure. Her hair was down around her shoulders, shining under the soft lights. No one should look that good on the day she buried her father.
In fact, I’d thought earlier how wrong it was for me to notice how pretty she looked on the day of her dad’s funeral. I’d felt like a bad person. I felt even worse right now because my thoughts were not chaste. Or empathetic for her circumstances. I wanted to touch her, kiss her, run my hands through that glorious hair.
“I’m sorry.” Her cheeks flushed the color of a Honeycrisp apple. “I don’t know what I was thinking. It just slipped out.”
“Don’t apologize. I…” What was I exactly? Should I tell her how much I’d like to kiss her? Or how I couldn’t stop thinking about her?
“You’re what?” She shifted just her eyes, keeping her chin dipped close to her neck, as she looked over at me.
“How honest do you want me to be?”
“Completely. Even if it hurts me.”
“It won’t hurt you. I don’t think so, anyway. The fact is, I’d love to kiss you. I’ve been thinking of nothing else but you and feeling terrible about it since you’ve just laid your father to rest. I’m a bad person.”
“No, I don’t think so. In fact, you’re a really good one. An honorable man. A man who has been a rock for me these last few days. And yes, I want you to kiss me. I didn’t intend to ask you, but I don’t know. I’m not myself today. Obviously.”
“It shouldn’t be today.”
“What shouldn’t?”
“The first time I kiss you shouldn’t be the day you put your father to rest. I don’t want those two things mixed together in your mind.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re too important to me.” I twisted my hands together, trying to find just the right words to tell her the truth. In the last few days, I’d started to imagine a future with her, which was too early for me to say. “Because if we’re to kiss, after all the years of competing with each other and thinking we didn’tlike each other, it has to be perfect. It cannot be tainted by the sorrow of this day. Do you understand?”
Tears flooded her eyes. “I do. I do understand.”
“Tomorrow is a new day. A fresh day. Maybe the day that will become the anniversary of our first kiss. The first of many.”