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CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Serena feltthat had happened in twenty-four short hours Spending her first night in Sean’s bed Having a huge fight over histhat he’d fallen in love with her

She ht, speechless and stunned, but fortunately, Sean knew exactly what to do, and the next thing she knew she was lying beneath him on his bed, her arentle--and very arousing--fingertips

"Did I just move too fast after all my promises not to?"

She wanted to shake her head, wanted to tell him no, but she couldn’t lie to hi to come from somewhere far away, "so badly to believe that it’s true, that someone like you could love me"

"How could you doubt it for a second?"

"You kno people have said my whole life that I was beautiful?" God, she hated the way this was going to sound, but she just couldn’t hold back Not anymore Not with Sean "That word Love Whenever I heard it, whoever said it toBecause they weren’t saying it about the real me"

"But what if they were? What if everyone who ever said they loved you meant it?"

"How could they? How could any of them have ever meant it when no one but you has ever really known the real me?"

"I’ll tell you why," he said in a deep voice that ruh her "Your beauty is so much deeper than the makeup, the outfits you wore, the part you played all those years And your heart is so big, and so damned pure, that anyone would have to be blind not to see it Not to see you and fall in love with you the way I did froht when you looked at "

"I think," she said in a voice that was barely above a whisper, "that I’ve fallen in love with you, too"

He didn’t freak out the way she had when he’d said it to her No, he sier by the second "I thought youand being loved "What tipped you off?"

He stroked her hair back from her face and looked at her in a way he never had before A look so war, so sweet and yet so raw and real that it shot straight to the center of her heart "Where should I start?"

She loved the slightly cocky edge to his words, the fact that they could laugh and love each other at the same time She’d never known it could be like this, that passion and desire and deep emotions could be tempered so perfectly with such ease, and with friendship

The truest friendship she’d ever known