Dirty Secrets by Karen Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

From her purse she pulled out a single piece of folded paper and his heart started galloping in his chest. “This fell out.” She looked up at him, finally meeting his eyes, hers full of honest anguish. “I never saw it, Christopher. I never knew. I’m so sorry.”
    He took the paper. Carefully unfolded it. Reread the words he’d agonized over so many years ago, a thousand thoughts struggling for center stage in his mind.
She’d never read it.
She was telling the bitter truth, of that there was no question. She hadn’t rejected him, blown him off like he was nothing.
    She’d never read it
. But what might have been if she had?
    She cleared her throat and he looked up, met her eyes once more. “When I saw the letter, I knew I had to make things right. My best friend was with me at the time and made me promise to make sure you weren’t married or engaged or anything, because an old friend, even a platonic one, could wreak havoc on an existing relationship. That’s why I hired the detective. I wanted to make sure you knew the truth in a way that didn’t jeopardize the life you’d built for yourself.”
    Without her. The life he’d built without her. Because she’d never read his letter.
    He moistened his dry lips. Screwed up the courage to pose the question that screamed to be answered. “And if you’d seen it, Emma? What would you have done?”
    She blinked once. Twice. “I don’t know how things would have turned out, Christopher. We can never know, after all. But I know I cared about you. And I wondered . . .” She dropped her eyes to the tablecloth, her cheeks heating in a blush. “I don’t know what I would have said.” She lifted her gaze bravely, pinning him. “But I would have said something. I thought when you dropped our class . . .” She shrugged, shyly now, and looked away. “I thought you didn’t want to be around me anymore.”
    His mind had wiped completely blank and he wasn’t sure he’d ever breathe again. “Emma.” It was the only word that his brain would provide. The only one that mattered. She’d wanted him too.
She wanted me
.
    Maybe . . . just maybe she still did. Or would again. Either way, this was a chance people didn’t get every day. To go back and correct a cruel twist of fate. He’d let her slip through his fingers once. But smart men didn’t make the same mistake twice and Christopher Walker was a very smart man.
    “Emma.” He reached across the table and took both her hands in his. They were cold, her hands, and trembling. She was here.
She came to me
. What courage it must have taken to come, to say she was sorry for something she’d never even known she’d done. To admit that she really had cared, that was even braver. “Please look at me.” He waited until she did so, dragging her eyes upward until they met his probing gaze. “I left that class because I couldn’t stand sitting next to you every day knowing I’d never have you. I know I said in my letter that friendship would be enough, but I found out that wasn’t true. If I’d known, if I’d had any inkling you felt the same way . . .” He let the thought trail, squeezing her hands, hard.
    And watched her eyes widen. Change. Sorrow and apology became awareness. And heat. Her cheeks grew rosier still as her lips parted, just a hair. And it took everything he had to stay in his chair, not to leap across the table and crush her in his arms and kiss those lips the way he’d dreamed countless times.
    “Two seafood platters,” the waitress announced and two large plates were unceremoniously deposited in front of them.
    Their hands jerked apart with a jolt, a shiver racing down Emma’s spine. Dear Lord, it had taken every ounce of discipline she possessed not to leap across the table and kiss him. She hadn’t experienced any kind of desire in more than a year.
But I still can,
she thought. After a year of lonely solitude, she felt like a woman again. And how could she not, sitting