Once, his body had failed him, but he’d managed a comeback. His heart had been left untouched.
Not this time. Now he was trying to heal that in the same manner he had his body, with sheer will.
So why did he still feel as if he was holding on by a damn string?
Three weeks…
Get over it, Skye, it’s past time to get over it. He stood up, but before he could walk around his desk, another head poked in his office. Not Candace, coming back to bug him about a lunch order. Not his mother, or any of his four sisters.
Lily.
She smiled a little shakily, clearly unsure of her welcome. “Hi.”
Flummoxed, he just stood there.
“Um, is it a bad time?”
Well that depended on whether she minded watching him try like hell to find his tongue. She wore a gauzy sundress that showed off her tanned shoulders and toned arms. It hugged her breasts, flared out at her hips, and revealed the legs he’d loved having wrapped around him more than anything else in the world.
“I probably should have called.” Biting her lower lip, she came all the way into his office. “But I wasn’t sure you’d want to see me.”
Was she kidding? He couldn’t tear his eyes off her. Hell, yeah, he wanted to see her. He wanted never to stop seeing her.
She shot him a smile that he realized with a shock was filled with nerves. She clasped her hands. “I missed you.”
Yeah, probably he should have his hearing checked. Because it sounded like she’d said she missed him…
“I know that sounds ridiculous, given how it all ended so badly, but…” Spreading her hands out, she stared down at them, then lifted her head, her eyes glittering with emotion, fierce, stark emotion. “I can’t stop thinking about you, Jared. About the odds you’ve overcome, how you had to go through such trauma just to get the kick in the ass you needed to really live your life. See, I want to live my life, too. Without shielding myself or my heart.” She nodded, determined. “I’m not going to do that anymore.”
For the first time in three weeks, the fist that had gripped Jared’s heart loosened enough for him to breathe, really breathe.
“So maybe,” she said. “You’d like to spend some time with me? We could start small, like a date…If you’re free. Maybe this weekend…or next if you’re busy.”
He was free. So damn free.
“I really wish you’d say something,” she whispered, clasping her fingers together. “Anything.”
“Sorry.” He found his legs and came around his desk as a fierce exhilaration and overwhelming joy flowed through his veins. “It’s just that I can’t go out with you next week, I’m leaving for a sail through the Greek Islands.”
“Oh,” she said in a very small voice.
“But seeing as I missed you, too, so goddamned much, maybe you could stand to take the trip with me?”
She let out a choked laugh that was part sob, and covered her mouth with a shaking hand.
“I haven’t stopped thinking about you either,” he said, finally able to get it together to talk. “Not for one single second of a single minute since I drove off that mountain without you.” He came to a stop right before her and took her hands. “Now you.”
“I can barely breathe, much less speak.” She entwined their fingers. “I should tell you right here and now, before I kiss you and forget everything else including my name, that I’ve been thinking about some stuff.”
“Me stuff?”
“Yeah, you stuff.” She swallowed hard. “The seeing-you stuff. Seeing you a lot.” She smiled, and stole his heart all over again. “Look, we both know I’ve always walked away. It’s what I do.”
He shook his head. “I had no right to judge you.”
“It doesn’t matter. I’m tired of starting over, Jared. I don’t want a good-bye this time, or an ending. I want…us. You said you loved me,” she said. “I thought it was too much too soon, but someone once told me these things can happen in a second.” Her eyes filled. “A year. There’s no set time.” She smiled shakily. “It took me four days and three weeks, but I love you back, Jared.”
It was possible his heart was stuck in his throat, because when he opened his mouth nothing came out of it.
“Oh, God, we’re back to that you-not-talking thing again.” She drew a trembly breath. “Okay. It’s all right if you’re not ready to do this. I got that.”
“No. Yes,” he corrected when she whirled for the door. He caught her, barely, and turned her back to face him. “I’m ready for this, so ready.” He shook his head, trying to absorb it all. “It’s just that you showed up here, my single favorite walking/talking fantasy, and smiled at me, and from that second on, I lost my train of thought.”
She stared at him, and he had to let out a laugh. “Maybe…maybe you could say it again,” he said. “Maybe then it’d sink in.”
“Which part?”
“The L-word part.”
She stared at him, then laughed as a tear escaped. “That must have really thrown you, huh?” She slid her arms up around his neck and pressed close. “I meant it, Jared. I don’t know the how or the why of it, you with your gadgets and toys, and me with my wanderlust ways, but I love you.”
Tossing his glasses to his desk, he hauled her close. Lifting her up, he spun around. “I am never going to get tired of hearing that.” Setting her down, he cupped her face. “Say it again.”
She laughed, and it sounded far more free this time. “I love you, Jared Skye.”
“Oh, yeah, I could get very used to hearing that.”
“And besides the fact that it’s getting easier to say…” She slid her body against his suggestively. “It’s also a surprising aphrodisiac.”
“Is it?”
“Uh-huh.” She looked over his shoulder at his desk. “How strong is that thing, do you think?”
Laughing in relief, in joy, in overwhelming love, he backed her to it, then lifted her, setting her down next to his laptop. Putting his hands on her thighs, he opened them, then stepped in between, coming up flush to her body.
Ah, yeah, he’d missed this. So damned much. “Seems strong enough.”
She shoved his shirt up and put her lips to the spot right over his heart.
Undone, he held her close. “I’m thinking it’s plenty strong enough.”
“The desk?”
“You. Me. Us. All of it.”
Smiling, she pulled him down with her. “Well, then, what are we waiting for…?”
Epilogue
LILY SAT anxiously in her seat as the airplane taxied into the terminal. She was just coming back from a two- week backpacking trip guiding a private party through the Cascades. It’d been a wonderful, successful trek, her fourth since she’d begun working for Keith again, but all she could think about was getting back to Jared.
She’d missed him.
There would be no more trips for a while now, because she was going to be extremely busy for the next few months.
A wedding did that to a person.
She couldn’t wait. Grinning, she went into her backpack for some lip balm, and found the U.S. Weekly Review with the “Adrenaline Rush” article. She looked at the dog-eared page she’d read so long ago in her physical therapist’s office, the article that had changed her life. She fingered the Post-it note, and smiling, set the entire magazine down on the empty seat next to her. “Time to pass on the good luck, and change someone else’s destiny.”
