Prologue

PROLOGUE

VALENTINO

Nora

J amie pulled his lips from mine.

My first thought was to shout, “ No! ”

My second thought was that our kiss was so heated, so desperate, so deep, and it had lasted so…very… long , I needed oxygen.

I dragged in a breath.

In that space of time, Jamie took a step from me, meaning my arms were forcibly detached from where they’d been wound around his broad shoulders. Therefore, with nowhere to find purchase, they floated to my sides as I expended grave effort in solidifying my trembling legs beneath me.

I watched as he tore his hand through his dark hair, turned his head and looked at the floor.

My mind wasn’t working properly, considering it was busy dealing with not only allowing me to remain upright, but also the array of pleasant sensations coursing through my body. Sensations I hadn’t felt in so long, I forgot I could feel them.

But when my brain started to click in…

When what I was seeing in the haggard expression in Jamie’s handsome profile started to penetrate…

I felt a tightness start to form in the small of my back.

I was not feeling haggard.

For the first time since I met him all those many years ago, I was feeling hopeful.

And for the first time in years—nay, decades —I was feeling truly and completely alive .

“Jamie?” I whispered, and I didn’t like the tone of my voice. It was hesitant. Weak.

I was neither hesitant, nor weak.

Ever.

He looked to me, the drawn expression gone, there was a different tightness in his striking features now, and it corresponded with the steely light in his sky-blue eyes.

And his deep voice with that delightful touch of Texas twang he either couldn’t or refused to filter out after all his years living in the city was firm when he stated, “That was a mistake.”

If he’d slapped me across the face, I wouldn’t have been more offended.

This was when I took a step back.

As my feet moved, those beautiful blue eyes framed with a fringe of thick black lashes dropped to my fabulous Valentino red Roserouche sandals, and when he looked at my face again, I was treated to yet another expression from the magnificent Jameson Morgan Oakley.

Chagrin and gentleness.

Though, not only that.

Worst of all (far worse)…understanding.

“Nora,” he murmured, beginning to lift a hand my way.

“No,” I said coldly.

His hand dropped and his lips thinned before he tried again. “Perhaps we should talk this through.”

“I believe in the little you’ve said already that you’ve made yourself abundantly clear.”

“I disagree,” he replied.

“That’s a problem for you,” I returned.

“Damn it, Nora,” he clipped. “Now, after what just happened between us, is not the time for you to get stubborn.”

In that moment, I hated he knew me so very well. I detested that I’d let him in so thoroughly. I abhorred the fact, over the last few years, I’d given him everything he would allow me to give when I knew he had no intention of returning the favor.

Yes, our kiss had given me hope I’d been wrong about that last part.

And then he’d dashed that hope.

“I don’t believe we have the kind of relationship where you’re at liberty to tell me how I can behave.” I paused, but not long enough for him to have the opportunity to speak. “No, wait. You’re never at liberty to tell me how I can behave.”

“What we have?—”

I interrupted him. “We have nothing.”

I felt the arrow I’d nocked in the bow myself pierce my heart at my words—words (in my defense) that were coming from place of deep hurt—because I knew I took things too far even before I watched him flinch so fiercely, his head jerked with the gesture.

“Nothing?” he asked softly.

Not nothing! my mind shouted.

We were friends. We were very good friends. The best.

That had grown recently.

But we’d been something to each other for decades.

Something important.

Something beautiful.

I fumbled to walk that back. “Jamie?—”

“No, Nora.” His voice was a sheet of ice forming between us. “Now I believe you’ve made yourself perfectly clear.”

Damn it!

He turned to my door and didn’t hesitate to walk to it.

I stood rooted to the spot, experiencing something the likes of which its occurrence in my life I could count on one hand.

A moment of indecision.

I had no earthly idea what to do, at the same time I knew I had to do something .

It was agony.

He opened the door but twisted back to me, his wide shoulder in his sublime bespoke suit jacket swinging with that mixture of strength and grace that was so inherently him, something about him (among many others) I found ludicrously attractive.

“Grow up, Ms. Ellington,” he ground out after his eyes fixed on mine. “It was just a fucking kiss.”

I blinked in shock, which was, apparently, what happened when you experienced a spasm of profound pain.

While I was still processing the strength of his blow, the door snicked shut behind him.