He wanted to stroke her cheek. Run a thumb along her full lower lip to test the feel of it. To see her eyes widen with awareness.
“Be candid, then. You can ask me brusque, tactless questions anytime you like.” He was joking. Trying to make her smile and doing his damnedest to evade any more conversation about his time as a brigade surgeon.
But something in Abigail’s expression made him think she was taking the suggestion seriously.
“I do have something to ask you.” She still held his hand, and at some point had moved closer to him, too. Her voice was a soft stroke of breath against his cheek. “Something frank and honest.”
His heart thudded harder. He really should let go of her. Show her around the woods the way he’d promised. But she mesmerized him with her sultry dark eyes and her tender heart.
“Just this once, Vaughn, will you kiss me?”
Four
Too stunned to trust his ears, Vaughn waited a breath. A heartbeat. The brook at his feet rushed over rocks, babbling with far more clarity than his thoughts.
“A kiss?” He needed to be sure, as much as it pained him to ask, to risk her denying the words.
For an answer, she raised her free hand to his face, tracing his jaw through the thick scruff of beard that he’d worn since his homecoming. One more barrier between him and the rest of the world.
“It’s been a long, long time since I’ve had a real kiss that wasn’t about drowning sorrow and forgetting.” She spoke with an earnest sincerity that slid right past his defenses. “I just think it would be nice to have a taste of...what might have been.”
He could have resisted his own impulse to taste her, but he damn well couldn’t deny her request that made him want to move mountains to make her happy. To please her.
So he lifted up a rusty prayer for restraint as he threaded a hand through her silky hair. He cupped the back of her neck. Drew her toward him. He moved slowly, giving her time to change her mind. She thought it had been a long time for her? He’d bet it had been even longer for him.
And every instant of those achingly lonely months without a woman’s touch turned on him now, sending a roaring heat blazing over his skin. Sensual hunger reared up like a ravenous beast. Ruthlessly, he tamped it all down to brush his lips tenderly over hers. Once. Twice.
He breathed her in. Felt her breath catch. He skimmed a touch down the side of her neck while the whole world fell away around them. He wanted to bring her home and kiss her whole body this way. With the sweet reverence she deserved after the year she’d endured. His beautiful warrior.
Except she wasn’t his. And she never could be.
Breaking the kiss, he closed his eyes for a moment longer, unwilling to look into hers and see all that he could never have with her. He was too broken to share a life with anyone, let alone a woman who had a child on the way. She deserved so much more than the scraps of himself that he just barely held together.
When he felt her shift away from him, he looked up to see her brush her fingers over her lips, a gesture that made him want to haul her right back into his arms again. He steeled himself against the impulse.
“Should we finish up the walk?” he asked, holding out a hand to help her to her feet. “I think I see a fallen pecan tree over there.”
She nodded, already in motion. Perhaps she needed to get her thoughts together as much as he did. Ruby trotted between them, looking up at him with soulful eyes. Vaughn followed more slowly, knowing he’d never forget the feel of Abigail’s lips on his.
* * *
Back in her studio that evening, Abigail lifted her safety goggles and stepped away from her project to stare up at the giant tree sculpture she was making for the children’s ward. She set down her chisel on a workbench, knowing she was getting ahead of herself with some detail carving down low on the tree when she still had big cuts to make on the top half. She planned to graft branches of varying kinds of wood onto the trunk, creating a tree that was larger than life and represented all trees. In her own mind, she knew it was a multicultural tree. An accepting tree with many outstretched arms.
But she let people see in it what they chose.
She had a long way to go to complete the project and tonight she was still rattled after that kiss and the time spent with Vaughn, unsure what it all meant. She was in dire need of an outlet, and her work usually provided the best kind of distraction.
Unfortunately, not today.
She had been lost in the moment when she’d asked for that kiss, affected by the warmth of the man and the beauty of the surroundings. Heartened by his understanding of a night she would always remember with some sadness mixed in with the miracle of conception. Telling Vaughn had been cathartic. She felt a connection to him that went far beyond their brief acquaintance. Maybe it was because he had experienced devastating loss, too.
Whatever it was that drew her to him, she’d had no right to ask for that kiss. Her hand dropped to the swell of her belly where her child rested. She was a mother now, and she needed to start thinking like one. She could no longer afford to follow a moment’s impulse, no matter how compelling.
The remainder of
