Read Online Knight in Blue Jeans by Evelyn Vaughn - Free Book Online

eyes—only he could prompt so rude a gesture. “Please. When’s the last time you did anything you didn’t want to do?”
    “All the time, lately! I didn’t want to give up my business. I sure don’t want to be living off the grid. And losing you—” Mouth tight, he shook his head. “I did it. I’m not denying that. In the same circumstances, I would again. But Arden…” Smith sat forward in his seat, leaned nearer to her. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done, leaving you. That’s why I had to get drunk to do it. It’ll probably go down as the biggest regret of my life. You deserve to know that much.”
    The words of a con man. Except…
    He’d never been able to con her. Nor she, him. Their truths somehow linked them, even in their worst fights. Even now.
    Only as she felt her shoulders imperceptibly relax didArden realize just how much she’d longed to hear similar words. He hadn’t wanted to do it. He regretted it, too. She had to remind herself that neither point made anything better. “So why did you?”
    “I…” His gaze skimmed across the marble floor as if looking for the exact right balance between what he supposedly could and could not tell her. “I made some enemies.”
    “You? No!”
    His lips pulled into a reluctant smile. “It’s true. I had a…disagreement. With some of my associates. They had more clout than I did, and I lost. I mean—I had a choice. Give in to them, or lose everything. I made my choice.”
    Arden scowled. “So this was some stupid matter of pride?”
    “It was a matter of honor.” Smith scowled harder.
    “How?”
    “I…” He sat back, crossed his arms and his booted feet, wouldn’t meet her gaze. “I can’t tell you that part.”
    And to think she’d almost begun to forgive him! Arden rose to her bare feet, backed away from him and everything he’d once meant to her, everything he’d so easily discarded. “How very convenient for you.”
    “Convenient?” Smith stood, as well. “Hell, Arden, tell me one convenient thing about this! I lost my business. I lost my money. I was all but disowned by my family. Worst of all, I lost you. ”
    She stared at him, here in her bedroom, a strange amalgam of the man she’d thought she’d loved and a complete stranger.
    When he took a step toward her, then another, she refused to back away.
    “I lost you, ” he repeated more softly, and now he stood only a step away from her. Now he stood right in front of her; she could smell the dry heat of the day’s sweat—perspiration—and something else hot, like coals, like fire. Now he’d lifted a hand, warm and dry, to her cool shoulder. “None of this wasyour fault, and I hurt you anyway, and I’m sorry. I’m so very, very sorry.”
    Sorry. The word that she’d apparently longed for the most.
    She wasn’t ready to forgive him. And she certainly wasn’t ready to kiss him. But the apology soothed something deep inside her, something that had been raw and festering for over a year, and—foolish and weak or not—she couldn’t just ignore that. So she leaned across those last inches of space between them, leaned into the tall, hard strength of him. She tucked her head down, rested her cheek on the soft, worn cotton of his T-shirted shoulder.
    And when his arms lifted tentatively around her, then drew her more firmly against him, she sighed out more pain than she’d realized she’d held on to.
    Their truths. Linked.
    It didn’t fix anything, of course. But it was something.
    For the moment, it was enough.

Chapter 6
    A rden seemed deceptively frail in Smith’s arms, her skin still moist from her shower, her thick black hair damp and tangled under his chin. Did she have any idea how much he loved seeing her so bare of the mask of her makeup, her fine clothes and jewels, her styled hair? It had happened so rarely in their time together—a day at the beach, an evening caught in the rain. He’d longed to someday see her like that in his bed, waking up