Tatiana frowned. “Is she here?” She scanned the room. “I didn’t think she and Smith were coming back from Ireland until Monday.”
“No, she’s not back yet. She needs to speak with you on the phone.” When she looked down at the small purse dangling from her wrist, obviously wondering why she hadn’t noticed her phone buzzing, he clarified, “She called my phone asking for you. I’ve got a quiet place I can take you to talk to her.”
“I’m sorry, Quinn,” she said to the other man, “but I need to make sure everything’s okay with my sister.”
“Of course,” he agreed, though it was clear he hated to let her go. “It was positively delightful dancing with you, and please don’t hesitate to take me up on my offer to bring you up the coast to that private beach I mentioned.”
With a final smile for Quinn, she let Ian direct her through the crowd and into a small, empty kitchen off to the side of the ballroom.
Ian hadn’t thought this through, he’d simply taken the first available opportunity to get her alone. Now, as he stood close to her again, close enough to smell her perfume, close enough to see the pulse beating at the side of her neck, close enough to see the little flecks of blue in her green eyes, he lost the thread of everything but how much he wanted her.
More now, he was stunned to realize, than ever before.
One night hadn’t quenched his thirst for her. One night hadn’t gotten her out of his system. On the contrary, the passionate hours they’d spent together had only made him increasingly desperate for more of her.
“Ian? Don’t you need to give me your phone so that I can talk to my sister?”
Shit. He never lied. But he hadn’t been able to think straight when he’d seen her dancing in Quinn’s arms, so he’d simply said the first thing that popped into his head. “There isn’t a phone call.”
“There isn’t?” She frowned again, looking up at him in confusion. “They why did you drag me off the dance floor?”
“Because I needed to ask you what the hell you were thinking, wearing that dress tonight!”
The room was so small it almost sounded like he was yelling at her. But the control by which he’d always lived his life was currently in such shreds—precisely the way her clothes had been last night when he’d torn them off of her in his office—that he couldn’t moderate it.
The last thing he expected Tatiana to do in response was to give a little twirl. As the thin, sparkling gold fabric swirled around her knees, she said, “I was thinking that it’s a pretty dress. Don’t you like it?”
“It should be illegal.” The urge to touch her was so strong it nearly broke him. “All a man can think of when he sees you in that dress is tearing it off you.”
“Thank you,” she said as if he’d just given her a great compliment. “But why do you care if other men see me in this dress?”
“Because you’re—”
The word mine hung in the air between them, as potent as it had been when he’d said it to her the night before in bed, right before he’d claimed her.
Damn it, he was getting everything wrong with her again and again and again...when all he really wanted to do was figure out a way to make things right.
“I’m sorry about this morning,” Ian said. “I handled everything badly.” He shook his head and admitted, “And now I’m handling everything badly again. What I’m trying to say, what I need you to know, is that I didn’t push you away because of anything you did wrong. Every bit of blame for the situation lies in my court.” Not only for losing control and taking her to bed, but also for not being the kind of man who could give her the true love she deserved.
He couldn’t read her expression as he fumbled through the apology. What was she thinking? And why wasn’t she just saying it to him the way she always had before?
Of course, that was when his phone actually rang.
“I know that’s the ring tone that means something’s wrong. You should go take care of it. There are probably millions of dollars on the line right now.”
She was letting him off the hook, just like that, and perhaps he should have been grateful. But he’d spent enough time with her these past three days to know this wasn’t her. She should be getting up in his face and asking him why he was being an ass**le. Hell, she should even be grabbing him and blowing his mind apart with a kiss to prove without a shadow of a doubt that they were meant to be together.
Anything but this.
Anything but giving up on him. On them. Even if he’d done everything he could this morning to push her into doing just that.
“The call can wait. I brought you in here to talk.”
She looked as frustrated as he felt. “What do you want me to say, Ian? That I was really hurt this morning? That I felt like a fool? That I hated going from feeling as happy as I’d ever been one moment to sobbing my eyes out the next?”
“I swear to you, Tatiana, the last thing I ever wanted was to make you cry.”
“I know that. It’s one of the reasons I fell in love with you. Because you care so deeply, with everything you are, even when you’re trying so hard not to.” She shook her head. “All day long I’ve been trying to figure out what I feel, knowing it would be so much easier if I could stay angry with you. But then I watched you get up on that stage and say all those beautiful, heartfelt things. How am I supposed to stay mad at you? How am I supposed to fall out of love with you? And even if I could do either of those things, how could I ever forget how good making love with you is...or stop wanting to be with you again? I know you must have had lots of fun and meaningless one-night stands.” There was desperation in her voice as she said, “Tell me how to do it, too. You must know how.”