“I need to get my mind off this, Ari. It’s driving me insane to even think about it. I can’t just sit here in this jet with you and pretend I don’t still want you. I can’t continue playing in my head all the scenarios of what could have happened to Shane and Lia, either. So, the bottom line is that we are in this jet for the next six hours together, so we need to hash it out. We need to come to a solution about us.”
“There is no us, Rafe. Yes, I still want you. I’m human. I caved. That doesn’t mean I want to dive back into a dysfunctional relationship with you. It just means that I haven’t been laid in two years and my body went into meltdown mode.”
Rafe froze, and she wondered what he was thinking now. She thought over her words and hadn’t said anything too shocking. Yes, she enjoyed sex. Big deal!
“You haven’t been with another man since me?”
Oops, that’s what she’d admitted to. She hadn’t wanted to do that. No, she hadn’t been with another man, but not because she was in love with Rafe. Well, at least, she hoped that wasn’t why.
It was just that after being with someone like Rafe, someone who knew how to please a woman so fully, she hadn’t managed to find a man yet who could set off fireworks inside her. The men she’d kissed had stirred not a single atom of desire within her. Not even an electron.
If she could barely stand to kiss them, the thought of their hands touching her body was downright repulsive. There was no way she’d tell Rafe any of that, of course. He would have her on her back faster than she could blink. That wouldn’t get the two of them anywhere — well, nowhere but immensely satisfied.
She had to remind herself that the pleasure lasted for only so long before she had to deal with the repercussions of guilt and longing for a man she couldn’t keep.
“That’s none of your business, Rafe. I don’t ask you about your conquests, and I don’t expect you to ask me about mine,” she said sternly.
The grin spreading across his face took her breath away. Damn! When he smiled, he was spectacular.
“You haven’t gotten over us at all, have you, Ari? All of this is just your way of protecting yourself. You are smart. I understand what you’re doing. I treated you terribly. But I will admit that it pleases me that no other man has touched you.”
“I didn’t say that!”
Ari’s cheeks flushed in her frustration. She knew speaking to him was a bad idea. She should have just taken a commercial plane to Italy, and not subjected herself to ride with Rafe across the ocean. She’d rather have been sitting in economy between a drunken fat guy and the nonstop snorer, with a screaming baby right behind her, to boot. It would be less torturous.
“Why are you getting so upset, Ari?”
“I’m not upset!” she shouted. At the stupid grin on his face, she made herself calm down, taking a few deep breaths. “I’m not upset,” she repeated more calmly.
“Why don’t you join me over here so we can speak without calling across to each other?” he offered, patting the couch he was leaning back on. “I need for you to climb into my lap again,” he finished.
“I don’t think so,” she said with a huff.
“Don’t you trust yourself, Ari?”
“Of course I trust myself. It’s you I don’t trust, Rafe.”
“I can be a gentleman.”
“Ha!” That was a good one.
“I brought the journal,” he said as he pointed to his bag sitting next to him.
She should be worried about her friend. He should be worried about his sister. There shouldn’t be this tension between the two of them.
“Now isn’t the time,” she said, though her eyes strayed to the bag.
“I’ve had it on me since the library. I just never took it out,” he answered her unspoken question.
“Well, I’m worried about Lia. I couldn’t concentrate on it,” she told him.
“I’m worried about my sister, too, and my best friend. But, there’s nothing we can do from up here. I have well over fifty boats out searching the water for them now along with several helicopters. They will be found. I guarantee it.”
“What if you’re wrong? What if their boat crashed and they are gone?” Though she’d been the one offering him comfort when he’d first shown up on her doorstep, now it was her turn to panic. She didn’t want to voice the questions aloud, but her brain was firing on too many cylinders. Ari handled crisis excellently when it was first presented to her. But once she had time to think about it, she fell apart. It wasn’t a trait she was proud of.
“I would know.”
“How can you be so sure? You don’t know, Rafe!”
“If my sister or Shane were gone, I would feel it. A piece of me would die with them. If they were gone, I couldn’t help but know.”
He was so self-assured, so confident, when just a few hours earlier he had been the one tense and worried. She could still see the strain in his eyes, but she also saw conviction. He had no doubt that Shane and Lia would be rescued. Ari should feel a measure of relief in his faith, but she was still afraid. She didn’t have the same faith as he did. After what she’d been through with her mother — thank heavens Sandra was well now! — she could never quite assume the best.
“I don’t know…”
“They will be fine. I don’t want to focus on that. I can’t do anything while we’re in the air. So, I’d rather focus on us.”
“Do I have to repeat myself, Mr. Palazzo?” she asked in her best schoolmarm voice. “There is no us.”
“Oh, Ari, that is where you are wrong. There’s been an us from the moment you first walked into my office. You caused my world to spin out of control, and it still hasn’t righted itself. I’ve just come to the conclusion that I don’t want it to be righted. I like it exactly the way it is — with you by my side, spinning along with me.”
“We’re just going in circles, Rafe. I won’t be a kept woman ever again.”
“Then how about you become my wife?”
Ari stared at him in confusion. She could have sworn he’d just proposed to her, but she had to be hearing him wrong. There was no way he’d be such a fool as to ask her to marry him — certainly not now.
“I must have misheard you,” she said, sending a glare his way.
“You didn’t. You will become my wife. No, that wasn’t a proposal. When I propose, it will be done properly.”