Ian reached for a lock of her hair, couldn’t stop himself from touching her even when he knew he shouldn’t. “You’re right, I’ve always known how. But with you?” He moved even closer. “I don’t have a clue.”
* * *
Tatiana reeled from Ian’s nearness, from the need she could see so clearly on his face...and from the fact that the most honest man she’d ever met had actually faked a phone call to steal her away from Quinn and get her alone.
She’d come to the fundraiser tonight planning to make him see he couldn’t resist her, but now that it seemed to have worked, she couldn’t play any more games with him.
Love would never be a game to her.
“I wore this dress to get back at you,” she admitted in a soft voice.
“I know you did, sweetheart.” The endearment slipped from his tongue as easily, as sweetly, as it had when they were making love. And just as it had last night, it warmed her all over. “You’re beautiful in it. So damned beautiful.”
“I wanted you to see everything you could no longer have.” She’d thrown caution completely to the wind when she’d decided to make love with him last night, and though she knew a wiser, safer, more rational woman wouldn’t make that same choice again now, how could she do anything else but say, “But you can, Ian. You can still have me if you want me.”
“Of course I want you. But you want the fairy tale. You want Prince Charming to carry you off on his noble steed. You want romance and flowers and poetry. And it’s not too much to ask for, Tatiana, not when it’s everything you deserve.”
“Then why can’t it be you?”
“It just can’t.”
“If it’s because of what happened with your ex-wife, haven’t you and I spent enough time together already this week for you to know I’m nothing like her? I’m honest to a fault. I don’t want your money. I don’t need status. I don’t want you for everything that you have. It’s who you are that interests me, Ian.” Maybe it was crazy to lay it all out for him now, especially after everything he’d said to her that morning, but she couldn’t see how keeping it inside would be any better. “I know everyone makes mistakes, but I’m certain that being with you wasn’t a mistake. I was waiting to have sex until I was in love, and even if not everyone does that, it was right for me. I waited this long for you and now that I’ve found you, I’m not giving up. And even if I have to keep waiting, I will.”
“No,” he said, the one word full of such inner conflict it tore at her heart. “You shouldn’t wait for me. There are a million guys out there who would be a better fit for you.”
“I can’t imagine anyone fitting with me better than you.”
As emotion and heady sensuality swirled around them both, Ian told her, “I would take you to bed again tonight, tomorrow, and the night after that, if I thought sex was enough for you. But we both know it isn’t. And I can’t hurt you any more than I already have.”
She could feel, could see, his frustration, and wanted so badly to soothe it, even though she knew she was the cause of it. But how could she when she still didn’t understand why he was so adamant about pushing her away? “How do you think you’re going to hurt me, Ian?”
“Being with me—it will change you.”
“Of course it will. The first time I met you in Napa, everything already started changing. And now that I know you better, now that we’ve finally made love—”
“I’m not talking about good changes, Tatiana. You were with me all week. You know how many hours I work. You need, you deserve, someone who will be there for you. Someone who won’t think twice about putting you first, now and always.”
She could have reminded him that he’d left his staff meeting to track her down on Wednesday morning, but because she was certain he’d brush that piece of evidence away, she simply said, “When I’m filming, I work crazy hours, too. I understand what your life is like, that our schedules will take a lot of work to figure out. But I’m okay with that.”
“You might think that now, but you’d end up hating me. This warmth you feel for me would grow colder and colder until all that’s left is ice between us.”
Pieces of everything she’d seen Ian do during the past week, everything she’d heard him say about love, all swirled together into the answer. “Is that what you think happened with your ex?”
Thankfully, this time, he didn’t put her off, didn’t keep her out. “Yes.”
“She was warm once?” She shook her head. “I can’t see it.”
“Not like you. No one is as warm, as open, as you. But she wasn’t what she is now, either. I made her that. I turned her into what she is now.”
“You’re a very powerful man, Ian. And you might be able to control companies and industries through your will and determination and brilliance. But even you can’t make someone become a total bitch. You can’t turn someone with true warmth inside of her into a glittering, self-absorbed block of ice. I get that maybe Chelsea was a softer version of herself when you first met and started dating, but I can guarantee that cold, hard part of her was already there, just waiting to spring out.”
“I would have seen it.”
“Or maybe you didn’t want to see it. Maybe you were in a place in your life where you were ready to share it with someone and create a family the way your parents did with each other, so it was easier not to see it. Especially if she was trying her best to make sure you didn’t.”