Chapter 24

24

She was going to do the smart thing here and make a retreat, before she let herself do something stupid. Gene didn’t really want the same things from life that she did. Chantal wasn’t going to be an idiot and build stupid dreams just because they’d had a traumatic ordeal together and now he had kissed her.

She wasn’t a fool.

Chantal pulled back, one hand between them. “I don’t think we should do this. The next man I get involved with, it’s going to be serious, Gene. A potential forever kind of thing. I’m not really in the market for romance right now, but when I am, I want it to be the real thing. I’m getting too old to just play around. We’re grown-ups now. Life is different than it was before.”

She was thirty years old now. Gene was thirty-seven. He’d dated casually for as long as he had been old enough. He’d been serious about Mandy and about his ex-wife, but Chantal had always wondered about the depth of those relationships. If he was even capable of the kind of connection she saw between her own parents, between his parents, his brother George and George’s wife, or her own brother Charlie and his Rory.

Chantal wanted that more than anything. She wouldn’t settle for less than that.

She’d rather be alone.

“I know. And… I have a lot to prove. I’m not the same man I was six years ago when I was with Mandy.”

“Are you?” She made certain to meet his eyes, even though she was shaking inside. And not just from the cold. “You date a different woman every month.”

“Casually, and not that often. Genny just likes to exaggerate. I don’t sleep with them. I haven’t slept with a woman since my ex-wife. Calvin was less than four months at the time. She was having an affair.”

And that had hurt him. While he had dated a lot of women, she knew he hadn’t dated them at the same time. She would give him that. Hillers were extremely honorable in that regard.

“I am not going to sleep with you,” she told him, as blunt as she’d ever been with anyone in her life. “I just can’t do it.”

He brushed a kiss against her lips. She wanted to kiss him back. She would at least not lie to herself about that. But wanting and doing—two different things. Lying there in the moonlight was just… a moment in time. An instant that wouldn’t ever be repeated.

“We’ll see about that. I’m going to get you, Chantal Fields. And I’m going to keep you for life.”

She didn’t believe he had said that. “It just doesn’t work that way. I am not just yours for the taking.”

“No? Well, I’m yours. Forever. Now… I’m hoping you’ll give me a chance to prove that. Get ready, I’m not ever going to be finished with you. You can count on that.”

“Chan?” Genny called from somewhere even closer.

Rescuing Chantal from Gene once again.