try to hide her tears or wipe her nose. “It’s still open. I
said whenever, and I meant whenever. Even if it took…”
She couldn’t finish.
Once again his arms were around her. “Months?”
“Forever,” she choked out.
HE WIPED HER TEARS and grabbed a paper towel from her
kitchen so she could blow her nose. Then he had to kiss
her, of course. These last six weeks, it had been all he
could do to stay away from her. He’d lived for the moment
he could kiss her again. He’d prayed it would come.
He’d known all along that she might reject him.
She’d driven away almost four months ago. In that time,
he’d neither e-mailed nor called. It had come to seem
foolish even to imagine that he could knock on her door
out of the blue and be received with any kind of joy.
But in this kiss she gave herself with all the generosity that had drawn him to her in the first place. She held him tightly, she murmured his name, she pulled
back to look up at him with something like wonder.
“I can’t believe it.”
He grimaced. “That I’m here? Or that I was ever willing to admit what a jackass I’ve been?”
She laughed, as if she was too giddy to prevent it.
“Well…both.”
“Thanks,” he said wryly, and she laughed again.
He ran his knuckles down her cheek, stunned by the
amazing softness and by the trusting way she tilted her
face to meet his touch. “You busy?” His voice emerged
gruffly, and he nodded toward the laptop open on her
table. “I could come back…”
“Don’t be silly.” Fiona grabbed his hand and drew
him into the living area. “Do you want coffee? Soda?”
He shook his head as he sat on the couch. You. Only
you. “I just had a latte grande. My equivalent of a drink
for courage.”
“Well, then.” Fiona sat, too, on the middle cushion
so she was close enough to touch. She tucked one foot
under her and turned to face him. “You really just
packed up and went to Portland for two weeks? Did you
close the lodge?”
“No.” He shook his head in remembered bemusement. “My younger sister, Liz—I told you about her.”
She nodded.
“Liz grew impatient with me. She came for a visit.
So I thought. Turns out she’d gone so far as to make me
an appointment with the psychologist, and to take two
weeks of vacation herself. She gave me the key to her
condo, told me if I wasn’t comfortable staying at Mom
and Dad’s I could go there and sent me on my way.”
“Just like that.”
“I’d gotten those e-mails from Tabitha and Dieter not
long before.” Because he couldn’t help himself, he
reached out and took her hand. “I was scared. Which
meant I was ready.”
“Was it hard?” she asked, her eyes meltingly soft.
“Talking to the counselor?”
Even remembering was enough to bring a shadow of
the tension that had made his body rigid. “Yeah.” He
moved his shoulders, trying to release the strain that
memory—and the knowledge of what he still had to say
to her—had brought to his body. “Yeah, I wanted to run
out of there so bad I could taste it.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No.” He looked down at their linked hands, where
his thumb was tracing circles on her palm. “I thought
about you. Over and over again.”
Her smile was tremulous. “I’ve tried so hard not to
think about you. And failed. Over and over again.”
“I thought you’d put me out of your mind,” he admitted. “Hope was…a little hard to hold on to.”
Her eyes shimmered with tears again. “Yes. It is.”
“There are things I need to tell you, Fiona.”
“You don’t have to right now. Maybe I shouldn’t
have put that kind of pressure on you…”
He was shaking his head before she’d gotten half
way through her speech. “No. You were right. I need to
get this out of the way. I think I locked it away for a lot
of reasons. One was that I felt so guilty, on some level
I didn’t think anybody would—or could—love me once