Lexie didn’t take her eyes off of his face as she listened to him talk, and as he spoke her heartbeat pounded more and more rapidly. He liked her. He liked her! It was even possible that he’d liked her longer than she’d liked him. As slow as she was to anger, the emotion flickered through her for just an instant, mixed with all the other emotions that were flaring up inside her. How could she have been so stupid, so blind? She’d been in denial for years both about her feelings for him and, apparently, his feelings for her. If he were a different person she might have questioned his honesty, wondered how what he was telling her could possibly be true. But he was Eisen. He wouldn’t lie. She knew he wouldn’t. And so, she took him at his word, even though his little speech had raised so many questions. ‘What took you so long’ was, of course, chief among these, but at the moment, Lexie didn’t have the nerve to voice it. Instead, she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug, then drew away from him.
“Give me ten minutes,” she told him, a strange, hard to read expression on her face. “Wait for me. I’ll be right back.” She reached out to him, her still-ungloved hand hovering a few centimeters from his cheek, but then she thought better of it and turned from him, walking quickly down the sidewalk and taking her cell phone out of her pocket as she went.