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to come up with a reason.
    “It’s only a weekend getaway,” he said.
    Marco made it sound so uncomplicated, and that angered me. “Only a weekend getaway. Easy for you to say. You don’t have parents who are going to have expectations. I can hear my mom now. ‘You’re taking a trip together? What does that mean, Abigail?’ ”
    “So it’s your parents’ expectations that are holding you back? That’s never stopped you before.”
    Marco was right. It usually had the opposite effect.
    “Just so you know,” he said, “asking you to go away this weekend wasn’t an easy decision.”
    “Why not?” I asked, slightly miffed that there was any doubt at all on his end.
    “I’ve never asked a woman to go with me anywhere.”
    “Seriously?”
    “I’d considered it a few times, but”—he paused, as though trying to find the right words—“it never felt right.”
    “Did it feel somehow like a commitment? Like you would be giving up your independence, or your privacy, or, I don’t know . . . control?”
    Marco studied me for a long moment. “Do you feel like you’re giving those things up?”
    “Maybe. I mean, after the whole law school disaster, and my near miss with Pryce, and trying to make Bloomers profitable, I feel like I’m just now regaining some control over my life.”
    “Sunshine, it’s only a weekend away.”
    I could sense Marco’s frustration, but I felt I was getting closer to some important truth. “Then why didn’t it feel right to you with other women?”
    He took a long time to answer, then said very softly, “Because they weren’t you.” Then he took my hand in his and, with his other hand, slipped off my glove. Letting it drop onto his lap, he raised my fingers to his lips and kissed each one in turn. Then he turned my hand over and traced circles around the inside of my palm as he talked quietly.
    “I feel safe with you, Abby. It doesn’t seem like I’m giving up anything by going away with you. It’s more like gaining something I’ve never had before.”
    My throat was so dry I couldn’t speak. I watched, transfixed, as he bent his dark head over my palm and pressed his mouth against the fleshy center. My senses reeled. My hand felt as though it were liquefying. Tingles of desire pulsed up my arm, then tunneled down deep inside me. I lost awareness of everything outside our intimate circle. It was undoubtedly the most sensual experience of my life—and it was all coming from my hand.
    Still, I couldn’t shut out that cold, persistent voice of reason. Do you believe him? Can you trust him?
    I studied Marco with as much objectivity as I could muster, given that he was nuzzling my palm. But there was such purity in his gaze, such earnestness, that I knew he was speaking from his heart. This was Marco, after all, a man I knew to be brave and sincere, who had always watched my back, and who had saved me on numerous occasions—and he felt safe with me.
    With my hand still in his grasp, I drew him toward me. “I want to go with you, Marco. . . .”
    He looked up expectantly.
    “But I’m”—I paused, searching for the right word—“ concerned. I don’t know what I’d do if it ever came up again that you didn’t believe in me.”
    “I never stopped believing in you, Abby. You’d put me in an impossible position. I can say I’m sorry a hundred times, but until you trust that our relationship can weather a few storms, it won’t make a difference. I don’t know about your parents, but mine never agreed on everything, and it wasn’t that they didn’t believe in each other. They simply had different views.”
    I paused to consider my parents’ relationship, remembering some rocky times that I feared would end in their divorce, and realized that Marco was right: Disagreements didn’t have to mean the end of a relationship.
    “Come to Key West with me. It’ll be just us, away from work and family and friends and all the stresses in our lives. Just you and me.”