His brown eyes never wavered from her face. “After last night it would have been kind of insensitive to leave you alone without a word.”

“I know, but I thought…” She cut her words off abruptly, realizing what she’d been about to say.

“You thought insensitivity wouldn’t have stopped me from doing it.” His voice held no accusation—not toward her or toward himself.

Kelly gulped. She was trying her best to play her normal sexy role here—to lure him in and keep him off guard—but her wildly fluttering heartbeat was real. And her burning cheeks were real. And the flip-flopping of her belly was real.

Something had changed. She’d felt it in herself this morning, and now she felt it in Caleb too.

As if they weren’t exactly the same people they’d been before the party last night.

Peering up at him through her eyelashes, she explained in a rush, “Yeah. I mean, no, not really.” Well, that had been absolutely brilliant. “I mean, I didn’t know if last night had been as…significant to you as it was to me.”

And that revealed way too much. Far more than she’d ever been in the habit of revealing about her own feelings.

To anyone.

Caleb lifted his eyebrows slightly. “Didn’t you?”

Damn. Despite the thing that felt different between them, she’d thought she could trust that Caleb wouldn’t want to have a soul-searching conversation. Evidently she was wrong about that too. “Well, I could see you were…unsettled by what happened, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything serious. Sometimes weird things happen and they don’t have a lasting impact.”

“Last night doesn’t fit into that category.”

Kelly squirmed again, her cheeks still deeply flushed with what felt like embarrassment—although she had no idea why she would be embarrassed. “Okay,” she mumbled, avoiding Caleb’s deep, sober gaze. When he didn’t respond, she added, “I guess I just don’t know where to go from here. Last night was…kind of hard. For both of us. Does that change things between us?”

Caleb reached a hand out and gently turned her face to the side and then up, so she was looking at him. Holding her gaze, Caleb murmured, “Kelly, listen. I know you have parts of your past that you’re not ready to tell me. But give me an honest answer to this. Do you actually want to be with me?”

It was an easy answer. An obvious answer. Just tell him yes so they could go on the way they’d been—in a half-lie that had somehow become the half-truth.

She opened her mouth to answer. To speak one word. To do what she was here to do. Deceive and manipulate him.

Her throat closed around the sound. She couldn’t speak it.

Horrified, she looked away, tried to clear her throat—although she ended up gagging a little.

“Kelly?” Caleb prompted. He wasn’t like any other man would have been in this situation. He wasn’t sentimental or seductive or persuasive or reduced to awkward, mumbling incoherence. He was simply Caleb. Calm and controlled despite his earnestness, with a slight flicker of uncertainty she could still detect.

“I do,” she choked out, her whole body shaking again the way it had when she’d been on the phone with Jack and realized how desperately she wanted Caleb to be innocent. “I want to be with you.”

He lifted her chin so she had to meet his gaze, his eyes searching her expression almost desperately, as if looking for the truth of her words.

“For real,” she added. “I want to be with you for real.”

There. She had said it. And she knew it had been convincing.

Because she meant it. For the first time in her entire life. She wanted to be with a man for real. To truly open herself up to someone. To be with him in a genuine sharing of selves. Not just a body but a whole person.

A tiny, fluttering part of herself—a part she’d thought she had vanquished for good—wanted that. Wanted it so badly her chest began to ache.

But this was Caleb. And no matter what he was feeling now, and no matter how much he was genuinely trying to be something he’d never been before, he still might have killed her father.

So she had to hold enough back to protect herself if that was the truth that finally came to light.

Her reflections hadn’t lasted more than a few seconds, and in those seconds Caleb had raised one hand to her face. He brushed her cheek and then combed his fingers into her hair, curving them around the back of her head.

“There are things about you, Kelly,” he murmured, “that I still need to know. I don’t do well with unanswered questions. But I’m realizing the questions don’t matter as much as the answers I already have. And I’ve never once, in all my life, wanted to be this close to anyone. This is different for me, Kelly. You know that, don’t you?”

She nodded, not because he expected her to but because it was the truth. She did know it.

He looked down at the floor for a minute and then looked back to meet her eyes. “I’ve never been in love. I’m forty-four years old, and this is the first time in my life when I’ve even wondered if I might be. I’m not sure if I know what love feels like.”

Her breath caught in her throat, and she couldn’t look away from the tenderness, the hesitance, the growing warmth in his eyes. She was trembling visibly now. He would have to see it.

“But I think it has to feel like this. Like…like you matter more to me than…than even I do.”

She couldn’t breathe, could barely see. Her whole body was shaking helplessly. She reached out for him, and he took her hands. Held them in both of his.

“So I’m going to say it,” he murmured thickly. “Because I really think it’s true.”

“Caleb,” she choked. She freed her hands so she could clutch at him, and he wrapped his arms around her.

“I want to say it,” Caleb said in a rough murmur, nuzzling her hair and the crook of her neck. He was holding her so tightly it was almost painful. “I want to tell you, blossom. Is that okay?”

“Yes.” She was almost crying as the emotion spiraled up in consecutive waves of fear and pleasure and grief and joy. “Tell me.”

He made a guttural sound and pulled back so he was looking her in the eyes again. “I love you, Kelly.”

She shook with stifled sobs.

He might be innocent. He had to be innocent. This man could never have killed her father.

He released a little groan and pulled her back into his arms, murmuring against her hair. “I love you, baby. I really do. I’ve never said it before. It’s never been true before.”

She was crying for real now, helpless to stop it. She couldn’t seem to let him go. And she heard herself saying, sobbing, “I love you too. I love you too.”

It couldn’t be true. Not fully.

But the part of herself she was still holding back was so small that it barely even counted. Everything else seemed to be poured out to this man, who was somehow everything she’d ever needed and wanted, who had somehow turned her inside out, who was giving himself to her in a way she’d never experienced before.

She wanted to give herself to him too—for however long she was allowed.

She could feel the emotion shuddering through him, and he held her in a hard embrace until her crying and shaking finally stopped, until she could relax, feel safe, sheltered by his strength.

This was the way she wanted to be with him. The way she’d always wanted to be with a man but had never believed was possible.

It probably wasn’t possible now either, but at the moment it felt like it might be.

He was stroking her hair and back, soothing her tension until it had dissipated and her body had melted against his.

Then he pulled back and met her eyes again.

Caleb smiled—an intimate little smile that belonged to her alone. Then he leaned forward, pushing her back until she was reclining on the bed. Moving over her, he brushed her lips with his. “I’m glad,” he murmured. Then he sank into a deep kiss—one slower, softer, more generous, more tender than anything she’d ever experienced before.