CHAPTER FOURTEEN
KEIRAN
It’s our last night in New York before we fly back to Glasgow, and while I’m tempted to spend the next few hours naked in bed with Ella, there’s something more important—yes, more important than hot sex with a beautiful woman—that I want to do first.
She’s looking at me from the corner of her eye across the backseat of the SUV, and damn, she looks so fucking good in that little black dress. “Have I told you how beautiful you look tonight?” I ask, echoing my own thoughts.
A light shade of pink creeps up from her low-cut neckline. “Thank you, but I really wish you’d tell me where we’re going.” She glances out the window at the New York City streets as we glide past, then back over to me. “Will you at least give me a hint? One tiny, little hint?”
This is the fourth time she’s asked for one tiny, little hint, and my answer has been the same every time—though I can’t help but smile a little as I shake my head. “Nope. I can’t give you any hints without giving the secret away. But I will say that we’re almost there.”
She might be acting irritated but I can tell she’s growing more and more excited by the idea of some mysterious surprise with each passing second. And if I’m being honest, I’m growing more excited as I anticipate the look on her pretty face when we finally reach our destination.
Another honest truth?
I’m just glad to be out of the dog house with her.
Not that I totally deserved all the anger and frustration she’s been sending my direction over the past week since that confrontation with my parents. But I’ll admit—at least within the privacy of my own thoughts—that I bear some of the responsibility for what went down that day.
I shouldn’t have let my parents stay as long as they did. They never would have had a chance to say those disgusting things about Ella if I hadn’t frozen like a deer in headlights.
Hell, I never should have let Kinsley in at all. It was a setup from the very beginning, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
“Oh my God, Kier,” Ella’s face lights up when the SUV stops in front of the Lincoln Center complex. “Are we—did you know there was an exhibit here?”
Damn, I can’t get enough of her smile. It’s more addictive than any drug.
“You mentioned it a few days ago,” I shrug, trying to act like I haven’t been planning this evening for the past forty-eight hours. “You said there would be pictures of you from when you were in the ballet here, and I…”
Her smile grows wider. “You want to see pictures of me? I didn’t think you were even paying attention when I was talking about this exhibit.”
The driver walks around to open her door and I follow her out of the vehicle. “Surprise,” I offer my arm as we walk up the steps together. “I’m not a self-absorbed asshole one hundred percent of the time.”
“I never said you were.” She shoots me a look from the corner of her eye, then offers a half-shrug of her own. “Just ninety-five percent of the time.”
I sweep her up the stairs and into the grand building
I can’t help but laugh. “Fair enough.” I nod toward the first photo display. “Seriously, though, I was curious to see this other side of you. Seems like a completely different world from what you do now.”
“Yeah,” she studies the photos for several long seconds without saying anything else, then adds, “It is a completely different world. I… was a different person then.”
We slowly walk around the exhibit, then stop in front of a life-size black and white photo of a ballerina mid-jump. Her shoulders are back and her chin is jutting out proudly. Her feet are off the floor and her toes are pointed straight down. It takes me a few seconds to realize it’s a picture of Ella.
When I look over at her, I can see that her eyes are bright with emotion. “You look amazing here,” I say, meaning it. “Do you remember the moment this picture was taken?”
She shakes her head without taking her eyes off the photo. “No, but I remember that feeling. That feeling of nailing it, of being the best one out there, the center of attention.” Finally she looks up at me, a tiny line appearing between her eyebrows. “How am I supposed to compete with that picture? With that version of myself?”
“It isn’t a competition. You’re still the same person.”
“No, I’m not. I was at my peak there. I was in the best shape of my life. I weighed… practically nothing. I lived on salad and chicken broth. I was miserable when I wasn’t dancing, but I look at that picture and know I’d give anything to go back to that time.”
I pull her into my arms and hold her there without saying anything else for a while. At least a couple of minutes pass while I just silently comfort her. “You’re beautiful now,” I say quietly once I’m sure she isn’t going to start crying. “I never met that girl in the picture, so I can’t tell you for sure whether she would have been able to make me laugh like you do or whether she could drive me crazy like you do.” I lean in and whisper, “Or whether I’d spend every minute of every day wanting her like I want you.”
“Do you mean that?” Okay, I was wrong. Her voice is shaky and there’s still a pretty good chance she might cry. “You can honestly say you like me better like I am now?”
“I like you because of who you are. You walk into a room and I have to stop what I’m doing so I can turn and look.” I nod toward the picture. “Like I said, I don’t know her. But I know you. I know how amazing you are. I know you’re just as beautiful on the inside as you are on the outside.”
We aren’t usually this open and honest with each other, especially not while we’re out in public. But I needed to say those things and I think she needed to hear them.
“Thank you for that,” she says as we walk away from her picture. “And thank you for tonight. I know it might not seem like it, but I’m really glad we came here. I knew it would be difficult to see this exhibit, but I would have regretted missing it.”
“You don’t have to thank me.” I want to stop her, to pull her into my arms again and kiss her pretty lips. Not right now, though. Not until we’re alone. “It’s not every day that I get a chance to spend some time alone with the prettiest girl in Manhattan—or Glasgow, for that matter.”
She snorts. “Now I know you’re lying, but I appreciate the ego boost.”
This time I do stop her, taking both her hands in mine even though I still can’t get as close as I’d like. “You might not believe me, but I wouldn’t lie about something like that. You’re beautiful, Ella, and I’m going to keep saying it.”
She gives me a funny look that I can’t quite read. “It’s times like these when I wonder how you could possibly still be single.”
I frown, ready to brush off her comment as sarcasm. “I—wait, you’re being serious?”
“Yeah, of course. This side of you—this honest, vulnerable, sensitive side—is sexy. That hard-ass, international power-player side is sexy, too, so don’t misunderstand what I’m trying to say. It’s just kind of crazy to me that you have all this going for you and yet… you’re still single.”