The Welcoming

lifted her head and looked at him again.
    “Things have changed.”
    It sounded so simple when he said it. “Yes. Yes, they have.”
    “Right or wrong, Charity, we’ll finish this.”
    “No.” She was far from calm, but she was very determined. “If it’s right, we’ll finish it. I’m not going to pretend I don’t want you, but you’re right when you say things have changed, Roman. You see, I know what I’m feeling now, and I have to get used to it.”
    He tightened his grip when she turned to go. “What are you feeling?”
    She couldn’t have lied if she’d wanted to. Dishonesty was abhorrent to her. When it came to feelings, she had neither the ability nor the desire to suppress them. “I’m in love with you.”
    His fingers uncurled from her arm. Very slowly, very carefully, as if he were retreating from some dangerous beast, he released her.
    She read the shock on his face. That was understandable. And she read the distrust. That was painful. She gave him a last unsmiling look before she turned away.
    “Apparently we both have to get used to it.”
    ***
    She was lying. Roman told himself that over and over as he paced the floor in his room. If not to him, then certainly to herself. People seemed to find love easy to lie about.
    He stopped by the window and stared out into the dark. The rain had stopped, and the moon was cruising in and out of the clouds. He jerked the window open and breathed in the damp, cool air. He needed something to clear his head.
    She was working on him. Annoyed, he turned away from the view of trees and flowers and started pacing again. The easy smiles, the openhanded welcome, the casual friendliness . . . then the passion, the uninhibited response, the seduction. He wanted to believe it was a trap, even though his well-trained mind found the idea absurd.
    She had no reason to suspect him. His cover was solid. Charity thought of him as a drifter, passing through long enough to take in some sights and pick up a little loose change. It was he who was setting the trap.
    He dropped down on the bed and lit a cigarette, more out of habit than because he wanted one. Lies were part of his job, a part he was very good at. She hadn’t lied to him, he reflected as he inhaled. But she was mistaken. He had made her want, and she had justified her desire for a relative stranger by telling herself she was in love.
    But if it was true . . .
    He couldn’t allow himself to think that way. Leaning back against the headboard, he stared at the blank wall. He couldn’t allow himself the luxury of wondering what it would be like to be loved, and especially not what it would be like to be loved by a woman to whom love would mean a lifetime. He couldn’t afford any daydreams about belonging, about having someone belong to him. Even if she hadn’t been part of his assignment he would have to sidestep Charity Ford.
    She would think of love, then of white picket fences, Sunday dinners and evenings by the fire. He was no good for her. He would never be any good for her. Roman DeWinter, he thought with a mirthless smile. Always on the wrong side of the tracks. A questionable past, an uncertain future. There was nothing he could offer a woman like Charity.
    But God, he wanted her. The need was eating away at his insides. He knew she was upstairs now. He imagined her curled up in the big four-poster, under white blankets, perhaps with a white candle burning low on the table.
    He had only to climb the stairs and walk through the door. She wouldn’t send him away. If she tried, it would take him only moments to break down her resistance. Believing herself in love, she would yield, then open her arms to him. He ached to be in them, to sink into that bed, into her, and let oblivion take them both.
    But she had asked for time. He wasn’t going to deny her what he needed himself. In the time he gave her he would use all his skill to do the one thing he knew how to do for her. He would prove her innocence.
    ***
    Roman watched the tour group check out the following morning. Perched on a stepladder in the center of the lobby, he took his time changing bulbs in the ceiling fixture. The sun was out now, full and bright, bathing the lobby in light as a few members of the tour loitered after breakfast.
    At the front desk, Charity was chatting with Block. He was wearing a fresh white shirt and his perpetual smile. Taking a calculator from his briefcase, he checked to see if Charity’s tallies matched