Page 48 of Just One More Night

She smiled, though her heart was thumping at her. “How flattering.”

“I wanted nothing to do with any of this,” he growled at her. “What place is there in a life such as mine for a creature as soft as you are? You are too little, too breakable. You clearly have no sense of your own peril. You are American, of all things. And yet I knew that you were it for me. Instantly.”

She blew out a breath, shuddery and long. “Why are you telling me this as if you’re saying goodbye?”

And the way he smiled then changed him. He made her want to cry.

Maybe she did.

“I fell in love withyou, Indy,” he told her, almost hoarsely. “And I don’t want to change you. I don’t want to tie you down. I threw out my entire world so that I might try to deserve an angel in an alleyway. How could I pluck off your wings?”

An angel in alleyway. It sounded like a poem, and even though Indy still felt as if she might cry, there was something laced through it. Something so beautiful it hurt.

“It doesn’t take much to deserve me,” she told him, though her voice was thick. “I think you’ve already cracked the code.”

But Stefan shook his head again, looking down at where he had his hands braced on the counter. “You have spoken a great deal about how you want to find your passion. I want this for you. And I know who you are, Indy. I know you are not a girl who stays put.”

“Stefan—”

He ignored her, lifting that blue gaze to hers. “But I will. I want you to understand that I’m not afraid of anything you might find out there, or anything you might do. I have never been a patient man, but for you, I will wait.” He managed to indicate the house with one of those shrugs of his. “I will be here. And I know you’ll come back. Maybe more than once. And maybe one day, you will stay.”

Indy stared at him, stricken. That look on his face was doing odd things inside of her. He looked so stoic. So resigned. And yet here he was, making this sacrifice, when she knew there was not one inch of this man who was at all good with either waiting, letting go, or sacrificing himself in any way.

She knew it.

She knewhim.

Maybe what she knew most of all was the two of them, together.

“This is what you think will happen?” she asked softly. “You think the passion I want to find involves going back out there and continuing to do what I’ve always done?”

That muscle in his jaw twitched, but his gaze remained steady. “If that is what you want, I won’t be the one to stop you.”

Indy wanted to throw something at him. She wanted to throw herself at him. Hug him a little and maybe shake him while she was at it.

But she didn’t do any of those things.

“Well,” she said. And maybe made a little meal out of the word. “Look at that. You don’t know everything.”

Whatever response he’d expected, that clearly wasn’t it.

Stefan blinked. His head tilted slightly to one side. And she watched those impossible blue eyes change once more.

Taking on a shade she recognized.

Danger, not sacrifice.

Which was to say,him.

“I woke up this morning and everything made sense.” It was her turn to look at him steadily. To hide nothing. “Yesterday was so intense it’s like it was a key in a lock. You wouldn’t let me speak and so I couldn’t make excuses. Not even in my own head.”

“You don’t need to draw this out. You can simply leave. I told you this already.”

“And in the middle of all that intensity, the whole world boiled down to this,” Indy said, ignoring him. “I didn’t think that I was searching for anything, but then I found you. I think you know I’ve had a lot of steamy nights. I don’t normally pay them any attention. They fade away as soon as the sun comes up, and I go on to the next. It was different with you.”

“Maybe it was the gun,” he suggested, with a glimmer of that dry humor she loved.

She smiled at him, and even she knew that it was a real smile. Because it was for him.