Page 67

She wasn’t exactly estranged from her brothers or the rest of the family, but her interactions with them were few and far between, instigated by both sides in equal measures. It was a situation that hurt her, regardless of how much she tried to deny it.
I started to gather the pictures, intending to put them away. But a wild urge stopped me.
Besides the wariness and suspicion, there’d been something else in her expression when she’d
looked at her pictures just now.
An expression of...surprise.
As if she was seeing herself in this light for the first time. I wasn’t letting the opportunity slip me by. I wanted her to rediscover whatever she’d had taken from her by her family or the world at large.
And hell, I was playing with fire, risking whatever time we had left with this impromptu experiment that could blow up in my face.
But wasn’t taking risks part of my life? My soul?
Her voice certainly called into question my sanity as she trailed me out of the office. ‘What the hell are you doing, Jensen?’
She could stop me at any time, command me to destroy the pictures, and I would do it. I was still
hers to command; had a feeling I would be far longer than the snowstorm lasted.
But even that disturbing admission didn’t stop me from walking across the room to place one
picture over the fireplace. The second one I attached to the fridge door, the next on the fourth step.
The fourth I pinned to the front door, the fifth on the coffee table next to the sofa, where she tended to place her wineglass. The last one I was saving for the bedroom.
‘Jensen.’ Her voice shook with warning as she watched me.
Hands empty, I faced her. ‘I want you to see yourself the way I see you.’
She refused to look at the pictures. ‘And how’s that?’ she sneered.
‘Beautiful. Breathtaking. Full of wonder.’
Her hands bunched tightly over the blanket until her knuckles turned white. ‘Instead of? Just how do you think I see myself?’
Crap, this had turned way heavier than I’d anticipated, but I didn’t back away from it. ‘The labels you call yourself are other people’s opinion of you. And yet I think deep down you believe them,
don’t you?’
Her lips firmed, mutiny in her silence.
‘You’re not spoilt. If you were, you wouldn’t have sent your team away and braved the elements
with me with nothing but a phone and a change of clothes. You hate sitting back and being waited on hand and foot even though it’s my privilege to serve you like that.’
Her hazel eyes darkened. ‘I like control. That’s all this is, nothing more.’
I shook my head. ‘No, it’s not. Control is one thing.Considerationis another. Beneath all that bristling you’re a good person, Graciela. I just wish you would see that yourself.’
‘I’m not. If I was, I wouldn’t be alone,’ she grated in a harsh whisper, her jaw tightening as she
attempted to hold herself together.
More than anything I wanted to go to her, take her in my arms, but I suspected this would end very
quickly if I moved from where I stood. ‘You’re not alone. You’re here. With me.’