“Okay, let’s deal with one thing at a time. I’m no expert on relationships,” he said quietly. “We’ve established that, but I think this is one of those things you’re not supposed to think about, Gina. You’re supposed to go with your gut, with what you’re feeling in here.” He tapped her in the center of her chest. “You said as much yourself earlier, remember?”
“But that’s just it,” she said wearily. “I don’t know what’s in my heart. How can I? First Bobby steals from the business and all but ruins me in the process. That filled me with anger. Then you spend weeks hounding me for answers, which I deeply resented. Caleb dies. One of my best friends is devastated, and I am worried sick about her. My mentor is frantic about his wife’s state of mind. You and I wind up in bed together, which makes me feel things I never imagined feeling. Bobby is hiding out in the Cayman Islands and uttering barely veiled threats, which scare me and infuriate me all at the same time.”
She regarded him with a bleak expression. “Bottom line? All I feel right now is pressure. It’s coming at me from every direction. I just want to shut it all out.”
“Including me?”
“Yes.” She took a deep breath and met his gaze with troubled eyes. “I’m sorry, but that’s how I feel.”
Laid out like that, Rafe could understand her dismay and her confusion. “No, I’m the one who’s sorry. You have been through a lot. Maybe because you have always seemed so strong, I didn’t take into account that this would be too much, even for you. What do you want me to do?”
“You asked me once before if I wanted you to go back to New York.” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I do, Rafe. That’s what I want.”
He swallowed hard, fighting the surprising hurt that came with her words. But he had asked, implying that he would do whatever she wanted, and she had given him an honest answer. He had to walk away. There was no other choice.
“Okay,” he said quietly. “I’ll leave tomorrow.”
For an instant she looked taken aback by his ready agreement, maybe even a little disappointed. He had a feeling he was going to cling to the latter in the weeks to come.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, as the tears finally spilled over and ran unchecked down her cheeks.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “I’m going now, but you’re not getting rid of me for good. I’ll be back.”
“When?”
He grinned at that. “See, you miss me already, sweetheart. That should tell you something.”
What it told him was that he wasn’t going to give Gina one minute more than necessary before coming back to claim her. She would have her space, her time to sort through the emotional turmoil and the tragedies of the past couple of months.
But he wasn’t going to give her time to forget about him, to convince herself that what they had wasn’t real. In fact, now that he knew without a doubt what he wanted, he was going to do everything in his power to make sure she understood that it was going to last a lifetime.
Gina started to miss Rafe almost the instant she watched his flight to New York take off. But even as tears stung her eyes, her friends closed ranks around her.
“He’ll be back,” Lauren predicted.
“When?” she asked wistfully, just as she had asked him the day before.
“When the time is right,” Lauren assured her. “Something tells me Rafe O’Donnell is the kind of man who has a finely honed sense of timing. Besides that, the man is crazy in love with you.”
Gina was startled by the assessment. “He is?”
“Well, of course he is,” Emma said with a touch of exasperation. “Even I can see that.”
Lauren chuckled. “Listen to Emma. She may be oblivious to the way Ford feels about her, but she can still recognize love when she spots it in anyone else.”
“Oh, go suck an egg,” Emma snapped.
“Is that what you say in a courtroom when you don’t like what a judge has to say?” Lauren chided. “You must be held in contempt quite a lot.”
“Sometimes I am, but it’s worth it,” Emma said loftily. “Now, let’s go to the Heartbreak and have a beer. Tony’s is closed tonight, so Gina doesn’t have to work. I’m not due in court tomorrow. We can live it up. Maybe there will be some handsome men around who’ll dance with us and make us forget everything else.”
Gina didn’t hold out much hope that anything could take her mind off the fact that she had sent Rafe away, but she was willing to give it a try.
“I’m game,” she said. “How about you, Lauren?”
“Count me in. I’ve always been a sucker for a handsome cowboy who can dance.”
“Since when?” Gina asked. “You couldn’t wait to get away from a whole town filled with cowboys.”
Lauren shrugged. “Times change. Are we going to talk this to death or do it?”
Gina cast one more look at the sky in the direction where she’d last seen Rafe’s plane heading east. “Let’s do it,” she said finally.
Unfortunately, though, a couple of beers and the attention of a few men she’d known since childhood didn’t do a thing to keep her from thinking about Rafe and the fact that she’d sent him away.
“He jumped at the chance to leave,” she said despondently to Lauren. “Don’t you think he was awfully eager to go?”
“No, what I think is that he was doing what you asked him to do, even though he didn’t want to. Did you see how much paperwork he loaded into that plane? Boxes of it. That was a man who was settling in right here. If you’d asked, he probably would
