Campaigning for Christopher (23 page)

Preston crossed between his siblings to pull his wife into his arms.

“I love you,” he said simply, gazing down at her, his palm reaching out to rest gently on her swollen belly. “I wouldn’t trade one step of our journey, because we ended up here.”

“I love you too,” said Elise, standing on tiptoe to kiss Pres before looking back at Jessica. “Sometimes people hurt each other when they’re in love.”

In love.

Christopher’s brain scrambled to accommodate the hugeness of those two little words.

In love. In love. Oh Christ. Was he . . .? Jesus, was he
in love
with Jules?

“Chris is
not
in love with this woman!”

“Maybe not,” said Jules, lifting that stubborn little chin that he so adored. “But I’m in love with him.”

***

Julianne hadn’t meant to come out with the words like that—in the middle of a Halloween party, dressed like a sexy museum docent standing beside Dracula, while staring daggers at the sister of her new boyfriend.
Oh God. What have I done?
She took a shaky breath, gulping painfully over the boulder-size lump taking up residence in her throat.

Oh well. Nothing she could do about it now. It was out there. She couldn’t bear to look at Chris, and Jessica’s eyes, which had softened momentarily at Julianne’s admission, were hardening again.

“Even if that’s true, why the hell should he trust you?”

“Ask Jessica to dance,” said Elise to her husband.

“Want to dance, Jess?” asked Preston, snatching his little sister’s hand and dragging her onto the dance floor despite her protests.

“Probably best to say good night,” said Elise, giving Julianne a sympathetic smile before disappearing into the crowd.

They stood together as though frozen, with Chris’s arm still around her waist, though she could barely begin to imagine how terribly awkward she’d just made things between them.

“I . . .,” she murmured, without looking at him. “I d-don’t . . . I, um, I . . .”

She couldn’t make words. She couldn’t form thoughts. She’d just told Chris that she was in love with him.
Oh God. Oh no. No, no, no.
The timing, the place, the . . . everything, was all wrong.

He still hadn’t said anything, and she couldn’t bear to look into his eyes and see awkwardness or discomfort or, oh God, repulsion. Her heart raced uncomfortably, and she reached up and pressed her hand over her blouse, against the deep V of feverish, exposed skin under her throat.

“You can just take me home,” she said softly, her voice on the verge of breaking as she stared down at her shoes, her silly high-heeled shoes. How excited she’d been when she bought them this afternoon at Goodwill, anticipating Chris’s darkened eyes as they checked out her legs. How ridiculous and cheap they felt now. She wanted to throw them away. Burn them. Throw them in a wood chipper. She never wanted to see them again, never wanted to be reminded of this disastrous night again.

The gentle touch of his fingers under her chin was the last thing she expected.

Blinking away tears of pure misery, she raised her head, keeping her eyes down. His fingers slid into her hair, and he leaned closer to her ear until she felt his lips brush the sensitive shell.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, his voice flush with tenderness. “Come home with me.”

And just like that . . . they were the most beautiful shoes she’d ever seen.

“Y-you mean it?” she said, leaning into the warmth of his palm against her neck. “You’re n-not, um, freaked-out? B-by what I just, um, said?”

“Jules,” he said, palming her face with just enough force to make her meet his eyes. “I’m not freaked-out.”

She took a wobbly breath and laughed—a short gasp of relief—before sobering. “Your sister hates my guts.”

He planted a small kiss on her lips and took her hand in his. “Then it’s a good thing you’re
my
girlfriend and not hers.”

“A very good thing,” she said, following him out of the party, ready to follow him anywhere.

***

As though by tacit agreement, they didn’t say very much to each other on the ride from Haverford to Philadelphia. Jules fiddled with the radio until she settled on the nineties ballad “Sweet Jane,” by the Cowboy Junkies, looking out the windshield as she mouthed the words.

It was an especially sultry song, and when he wasn’t distracted by looking over at her gorgeous lips, Christopher was running every yellow light in an attempt to get her home and back into his arms as soon as possible.

In the meantime, it gave him a few minutes to process what she’d said at the party.

I’m in love with him.

In Washington, it seemed like she was about to say that she loved him, so he wasn’t especially shocked to hear her say it now. But he wanted to know when—
exactly
—her feelings for him had segued from like to love. Had something happened between them that signaled her that love had taken root in her heart? Or had she found herself in the middle of it before she’d ever given it a name?

For Christopher, who had never been in love, her blunt confession didn’t feel frightening, but perplexing. He felt certain that she believed the words she’d said—he could tell that much from the way she’d said them. But how did she
know
? When did the word
love
feel like the
right
word? And why? And how?

He had feelings for her, yes, definitely. He thought about her all the time. He wanted to make her happy. He felt happiest when he was with her. Even his carefully protected future had become fair game for Hurricane Jules. He wanted her in Washington. He needed her in his life. But did that equal love?

Love
felt like such a big word. Such a
forever
word. And while the concept of being with one person forever didn’t really scare him—honestly, it was what he wanted someday—he just wasn’t comfortable returning her feelings . . . yet. And that bothered him more than anything—that the legitimate relationship they were trying to build together was beginning on such uneven footing.

“Sweet Jane” was long over, and as Simon & Garfunkel serenaded them with “The Boxer,” Christopher pulled his car into the private lot under his building and parked in his spot, cutting the engine. They sat in the dark silence for a moment before he finally turned to her.

“I’ve never been in love with anyone before.”

“Me neither,” she said. “Until now.”

“Are you sure?” he asked. “That you’re in love with me?”

“Yes.”

He nodded, unaccountably relieved by her words. Then he flinched because of what he needed to say next.

“You have to know. I owe it to you to tell you: I’m not sure I am . . .,” he said, feeling worried, scanning her face as the words tumbled from his lips. “. . . in love with you.”

He prayed this confession wouldn’t hurt her or change her decision to spend the night with him, but he felt like he needed to give her the opportunity to cut bait here and now if her expectations of him weren’t in line with what he could offer her. He didn’t want for her to wake up tomorrow regretting the time she’d spent with him. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he could bear it.

She took a deep breath. “I . . . I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t
plan
to say it. Didn’t
mean
to say it. But now it’s out there now . . . and it’s the truth. My timing sucked, but I won’t take it back, Chris. I can’t.”

“I don’t want you to,” he said quickly, realizing that it would actually physically
hurt
him if she withdrew or reversed the sweetness of those words. He wanted them. Maybe he even
needed
them. He just wasn’t ready to return them. “I’m just . . . I don’t want to disappoint you. I don’t want to let you down, but I don’t know if I’m there yet.”

“Okay. Tell me this: do you have feelings for me, Chris?” she asked.

“You know I do.”

“And what are they?”

“Constant,” he said without hesitation. “Omnipresent. Overwhelming. Confusing. Desperate. Longing.”

Her face, which had been apprehensive, softened, and she smiled at him, her eyes sparkling like she knew a secret. “That’s a lot of feelings.”

“Yeah,” he muttered.

“It’s enough for me,” she whispered.

He sighed in relief, smiling back at her, wondering about her: how she knew, how she was so certain of her feelings for him when his could only be boiled down to an assortment of random words. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“How did you know?”

“Know what?”

He gulped, feeling young and naked and much greener than his twenty-nine years. “That you were in love with me.”

She looked away from him for just a second, then leaned over the bolster between them, reaching up to cradle his cheek in her palm, the expression in her eyes telling him more about the truth of her feelings than mere words ever could.

“I started falling for you as soon as I began to understand who you were and what you stood for. But, I
knew
. . .” Her voice trailed off, and he saw tears well up in her eyes, but her lips were still tilted up in the sweetest smile he’d ever seen. She cleared her throat and licked her lips before continuing. “I knew I loved you because I was willing to get hurt. I knew because I was willing to risk my own happiness to secure yours. I knew because being useful to you was more important than protecting my heart. And I knew because the minutes I spent with you made all the other minutes feel empty.”

He didn’t realize he was holding his breath until he exhaled in a long, low sigh, his lungs burning as he stared at her lovely face. Leaning into her hand, he closed his eyes and kissed her palm. “Those minutes felt empty for me too.”

“Take me upstairs,” she whispered in a husky voice. “I want to be with you, Chris. Now. Before any more minutes go by.”

Her words were like pouring gasoline on an already raging—but heretofore meticulously contained—fire. His eyes opened, wide and wanting, and without another thought, he exited the car and rounded it to open her door. Taking her hand, he pulled her up from her seat, slamming the door with a kick of his foot before tugging her toward the elevator.

As soon as the mechanical doors closed, he pulled her into his arms, looking straight into her eyes. “What do you want tonight?”

“Everything,” she whispered, her eyes black and endless, her voice just short of a sigh.

“Everything,” he groaned, his body hardening from her words, his skin flushed and electric, his sex swelling inside his boxers. “I know you haven’t . . . been with many people.”

“That’s true.”

He wanted her so badly, it took every drop of strength for him to ask, “Are you sure?”

“Listen to me closely, Congressman Winslow.” She wound her arms around his neck, pressing her lush breasts into his chest, staring into his eyes as she spoke. “I love how you care about people and how you give of yourself. I love it when you take an extra minute to talk to an older person in a wheelchair, the way you lean closer to hear what they’re saying. I love it that you grew up with so much, but instead of hoarding it, you give it back. I love it that you couldn’t keep yourself from forgiving me, even after what I did to you. You have the best heart of anyone I’ve ever known, Chris. And I love it. I love
you
. Yes, I want to be with you. Yes, I’m sure. It doesn’t matter how many or how few have come before you. All that matters is right now. And right now, I belong to you.”

“Jules,” he breathed, overwhelmed and desperate with longing.

“Kiss me.”

***

Chris’s lips slammed into hers, and even when the elevator dinged its arrival on his floor, he didn’t stop kissing her, stepping backward and pulling her out of the elevator with him. She whimpered into his mouth, leaning her head back against the hallway wall and baring her throat. His lips slid down her chin, blazing a trail of heat to her collarbone as his hands fell to her waist, sliding to her hips, cupping her ass and lifting her into his arms as she braced her back against the wall. She locked her ankles around his back, cupping his face and demanding his lips again as he backed away from the wall with her in his arms.

Arriving at his apartment, he let her slide down his body until her feet hit the floor, and Julianne was grateful for his arm around her waist, holding her up when her knees threatened to buckle.

With his other hand, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a ring of keys. Panting, with wild, dark green eyes, he stared at her lips for just a moment before inserting the key and turning.

As he held the door open, she met his gaze, holding it as she backed into the dark apartment. He stepped in after her, letting the door close, letting his keys fall to the ground in a clatter.

She took off her docent’s glasses and dropped them with a light thud.

He unfastened the Dracula cape from his neck, and it fell to the ground in a soft whoosh.