Chapter 4 #3
“Am I… Am I what?” She hated that he turned her into a stuttering fool, but being this close to him when he was obviously enraged with her had fried her brain cells.
“Are you sorry she left me?” He stepped closer, forcing Kate to back up—right into a wall.
“I, um…” What was she supposed to say to that?
His face was now an inch from hers when he asked again, more slowly this time. “Are you sorry she left me?”
Since she didn’t dare try to speak, Kate shook her head.
“Why?” He zeroed in on her lips, which made them go dry.
Kate licked them and watched his eyes darken with what looked like desire. His eyes had always gotten darker and sexier when he was turned on.
His hands landed on her hips, fingertips digging into her skin through the silk and setting her on fire. “Why?”
“Because I want you.” With him standing a mere inch from her, with him touching her for the first time in a very long decade, it suddenly wasn’t difficult at all to tell him the truth. “I’ve always wanted you. Even when I wasn’t supposed to want you.”
And then he was devouring her. There was simply no other word to describe the way he kissed her, as if he’d been saving up for this moment for as long as they’d been apart. He consumed her with his lips, tongue and teeth.
Kate wound her arms around his neck and held on as tightly as she could, kissing him back with everything she had.
She had no idea how long they stood there, pressed against the wall, kissing each other with years of pent-up passion and desire fueling their embrace.
It was unlike anything Kate had ever experienced, even with him.
And still his hands never moved from her hips.
He held on so tightly, as if he was afraid she might get away if he let go.
Wanting more of him, Kate arched into his embrace, encountering the hard press of his erection against her belly. When she gasped, he broke the kiss and turned his focus on her neck.
“This is crazy,” he whispered between openmouthed kisses that made her melt in his arms. “What’re you even doing here?”
“I came for you.” She fisted a handful of his hair, remembering the way the dark silky strands had felt between her fingers the first time they were together.
The feel of his hair on her skin was something she’d thought about long after they broke up.
“I couldn’t stop wanting you. I tried for so long to stop, but I couldn’t. I never stopped.”
His groan was nothing less than tortured. “I never stopped either. I thought of you every day. I listened to your music whenever I was in the car alone. It made me feel closer to you.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, a sob escaping from her lips almost against her will. “I was horrible to you, and you helped me so much.”
He quieted her with another deep, searching kiss that made her want to beg for more of him. “I was wrong to go behind your back the way I did. You were exactly right when you said I’d disrespected you.”
Kate shook her head. “Everything I have is because of what you did. I was an idiot to think the career would’ve happened without someone helping me.”
“I have no doubt at all it would’ve happened with me or without me.
” As he said those words, his hands finally left their perch on her hips and moved up to cup her breasts.
“You’re more beautiful than ever, if that’s possible.
When I saw you on my beach today…” He shook his head. “I thought I’d dreamt you.”
“I didn’t come here to mess things up for you. I didn’t know you had someone else. I swear. I never would’ve come if I had known that.”
“Mari is a lovely woman, and she was very good to me, but she isn’t you. There’s never been anyone else quite like you.”
Kate ran her fingers over the prominent cheekbones she’d always been so captivated by. “For me either.”
“Not even Clint What’s-his-name?” he asked with a raised brow.
Kate laughed at the expression on his face. “More rumor than truth.”
“I was consumed by jealousy. Every time I read you were with someone new, I wanted to find them and beat the hell out of them and tell them you were mine. Mine.” He kissed her. “Always mine.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “I was always yours. From the very beginning. I’ve never wanted anyone else.”
“But there’ve been others…”
“None that mattered.”
“Kate…” He wrapped his arms tight around her. “I can’t believe you’re here and I’m holding you and telling you these things I’ve kept secret all this time.”
“I can’t believe it either. I’ve spent so many nights on my tour bus, watching the world go past my window, wondering where you were and if you were happy, if you thought of me at all. So many nights. Almost every night.”
“We’ve wasted so much time.”
Kate looked up at him. “What about… What about Mari?”
“I care for Mari,” he said, a pained look occupying his handsome features. “She’s a lovely person, but I never made her any promises.”
“Were you together a long time?”
“Six months.”
“Do you love her?”
“I love her, but I’m not in love with her.”
“Oh. You aren’t?”
“I couldn’t be.”
“What do you mean?”
“How could I be in love with her when I never stopped being in love with you?”
Kate stared up at him, wondering if he’d really said that or if she’d wanted it so badly she’d imagined it.
He framed her face and tipped her head back to receive his kiss, which was gentle this time, as opposed to wild. “Don’t cry,” he whispered. “Please don’t cry. It’ll be okay now.”
Kate hadn’t realized tears were flowing from her eyes until he swept them away with his thumbs. “I want to believe it’ll work out the way we want it to, but all I can think about are the many reasons it wasn’t okay last time.”
“That was a long time ago. A lot has changed since then.”
“Not everything. Your son still doesn’t speak to me, for one thing.”
“That’s his problem, not ours.”
“It’s not that simple. There’re so many things to consider.”
“And none of them have to be considered tonight,” he said, kissing her. “Or tomorrow.” Another kiss. “Or even the next day.” As he spoke, he backed her away from the wall and guided her toward the bedroom. “Do you want me to go?”
Shaking her head, she said, “I want you to stay forever.”
His grin lit up his face as he came down on top of her on the bed.
Kate ran her fingers through his hair, over and over, relearning every feature of his gorgeous face. “What happened here?” she touched her finger to a new scar that ran through his right eyebrow.
“A tropical storm blew through a couple of years ago. I was helping a friend replace a window at his house when a piece of the broken one caught me just so.”
“Ouch. Did you need stitches?”
“Three.”
Kate brought him down close to her and pressed three kisses to the scar, making him smile.
“You’ve been ill,” he said, tracing his finger over the dark circles under her eyes.
“Pneumonia. Hit me hard.”
“I read about what happened in Oklahoma City.”
“That was pretty scary.”
“You’re pushing yourself too hard.”
“I don’t have anything else to do. My work is my life.”
“Ah, Kate… I’ve learned the hard way there’s so much more to life than work.” He shifted off her and propped himself up on an elbow.
Filled with questions she was dying to ask him, Kate turned to face him. The questions, she decided, were more important than the passion. “Do you miss your work?”
“Not at all. I do exactly what I want all day, every day. I get asked to consult on a lot of what goes on around here. If I feel like it, I do. If I don’t, I say no.
I’ve overseen the building of affordable housing here, which is very rewarding.
It’s a heck of a lot more fun than working twenty hours a day, that’s for sure. ”
“Don’t you ever get bored?”
“Nope. There’s so much to do. I love to sail and scuba dive and fish. Fishing is so relaxing. I had no idea.”
“I haven’t been fishing since I lived at home.”
“Did you like it back then?”
“I did. I was kinda good at it, too.”
“You should do it again sometime. I also like to mess around with old abandoned boats, like the one I was working on today.”
“What do you do with them after you fix them up?”
“I give them to local kids, who use them to fish.” He twirled a lock of her hair around his finger.
“I used to dream of the life I have now, you know? I’d be flying off to Chattanooga or Memphis or Knoxville to check on jobs, and all the way there I’d dream about living in the islands in a small place on the beach with nothing to do all day other than what I felt like doing. ”
“You worked hard for a long time to be able to do this.”
“Yes, I did.”
“My life is in Nashville,” she reminded him.
“When you’re home.”
“When I’m home.”
“How’s Thunder?”
The mention of the beloved horse he’d given her after they broke up made her smile. “Wonderful—and human—as always. I swear he understands me better than most of the people in my life do.”
“He always did get you, right from the very beginning, remember?”
“I remember everything. I remember every single minute we spent together, because I’ve relived every one of them a million times. The night you took me riding in the snow… I’ve never done anything more amazing.”
“I think about that night a lot, too. It was so perfect.” He continued to twirl the lock of hair around his finger, again and again. “That was the night you gave me the song you wrote for me.”
“‘I Thought I Knew,’ still my biggest hit. I end every show with it.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?”
Half his face lifted into a small smile that lit his eyes.
“Oh God, have you been to my shows?”
“Maybe. Once or twice. Four times, actually,” he said with a sheepish grin.
“Oh, Reid! Why didn’t you ask to see me?”
“I didn’t think I’d be welcome after the way we left things.”
Kate closed her eyes and let go with a deep, pained sigh. “It was all my fault.”
“No, it wasn’t. We made a mess of things together, and we can both take a share of the blame. Something you said to me that last day has stayed with me all this time.”