by Bella Andre
“You’re not going to hurt me.”
He sounded so certain that she almost believed he could make it so. And when he lowered his mouth to hers, she felt as though the passion and the emotion in their kiss just might be the magic ingredients she needed to make her wishes come true.
“Will you let me love you, Taylor?” He held her face in his hands, holding her heart just as tightly, as he gazed into her eyes with deep emotion. “Will you let yourself love me back? No matter what hurdles we have to face, now or in the future?”
She had tried to keep him safe, but she knew deep in her heart that in the end, she would never be able to keep in, or hold back, her love for him. Not now that it had finally spilled forth last night in the most beautiful way possible. She couldn’t promise anything when it came to her health, but she could promise him this: “I will let you love me. And I will let myself love you too. I want to be with you, Justin. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
They were kissing when Ashley and Drew came back around the building. Justin’s arms tightened around her when he saw them, but he needn’t have worried that she was going to pull away again.
Giving him up was the very last thing she wanted.
Guilt at the thought that she shouldn’t have been so quick to fall into his arms—that she should have tried harder to protect him from future pain—pulled at her as Ashley and Drew beamed at them.
“Aha!” Drew said with a wide grin as he wagged his finger between them. “I knew something was going on in the kitchen this morning.” His eyebrows moved up and down in an exaggerated manner. “You two are finally getting it on, aren’t you?”
Taylor felt her face go up in flames as Ashley smacked her fiancé’s shoulder. “Drew!”
But Drew looked positively gleeful. “We’ve all been waiting forever for the two of you to see the light. To do the horizontal tango. To bump fuzzies. To make a bedspring symphony.”
Ashley clamped her hand over Drew’s mouth, giving Taylor and Justin an apologetic look even as the corners of her own mouth were twitching with a smile she was barely holding back. “Sorry that my husband-to-be has no manners.”
He nipped at her hand, before saying, “Good thing you love that about me.” Then he gave her a seriously hot kiss.
“What I came to ask before Drew went out of his way to get a rise out of both of you,” Ashley continued in a slightly breathless voice when he let her go, “is, would you mind coming to look at the guest house with me, Taylor? It’s where I’ll be getting ready on the morning of the wedding, and my brain is so overfull with details already that I’m afraid I might miss something I’ll need.”
“I’d be happy to come take a look with you.”
And she was even happier to be able to give Justin a kiss, rather than silently long for one the way she used to. Their kiss was soft and sweet and set dozens of butterflies loose inside of her. If only the shadow of guilt—and the weight of her worries about the future—would give up their grip on her, everything would be perfect.
But even though perfect wasn’t in the cards for her, that didn’t mean she couldn’t appreciate every wonderful moment she and Justin had together now. If anything, she appreciated them even more.
* * *
“Finally,” Drew said as he threw an arm around Justin’s shoulders, “you’ve got the girl of your dreams.”
A server came out of the tasting room with a tray of champagne flutes. “Here are several vintages that Marcus and Nicola suggest you taste so that you can make your final selections for this weekend.”
“Perfect timing,” Drew declared. “My brother and I have plenty to celebrate.”
They were sitting on outdoor chairs in the shade of a large oak when Drew picked up a glass and held it out to Justin in a toast. “To both of us snaring the women we were meant to be with.”
Justin clinked his glass with Drew’s, but barely took a sip. Holding Taylor in the middle of the vineyard, hearing her say that she loved him and that she wanted to be with him, meant more to him than anything else ever had. He’d never felt so high.
Or so low, when he thought about how much time he’d wasted. “How could I have been such an idiot not to tell her how I feel years ago?”
“No point in worrying about the past,” Drew said. “You’ve got the future to look forward to.”
The future. Justin had read all the statistics about the life-spans of PKD patients—the progress the scientific community had made with dialysis and kidney transplants was impressive. But he wanted guarantees, damn it. For the hundredth time in the past hour, he went back through everything he’d read before leaving the B&B.
Drew frowned when Justin didn’t immediately agree that his future was all roses and sunshine now that Taylor was his. “I’m pretty sure you have everything you’ve ever wanted now,” his brother remarked. “So why aren’t you skipping through the vineyards with cartoon hearts floating around your head?”
Justin hated to break Taylor’s confidence, but he needed to talk this through with someone. His father, though brilliant, was out of the question. Something told Justin there was a chance Dad might even agree with Taylor’s concerns about getting too close—if only to try to protect his son from any harm.
When the truth was that the only thing that would truly devastate Justin was living without her.
“You’re right,” he said to his brother. “This should be the best day of my life. After all these years of loving Taylor but not being able to tell her or show her, and not knowing if she felt the same way, my mind is blown to find out I’m not the only one who has those feelings.”
“So then I’ll ask again—where are the cartoon hearts?”
“She’s been diagnosed with PKD.”
Drew frowned. “What the hell is PKD? It sounds like the name of a bad metal band.”
“I wish it were.” Justin quickly explained the parameters of the disease to his brother, who looked shell-shocked by the news. “Unless she gets a kidney—and preferably from a live donor—things are likely to get really rough, really fast.”
“Donate yours.” Drew said it as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.
“I would, in a heartbeat.” Of course, Justin had already thought of that. “But she was so intent on shielding me from her disease that she didn’t even want us to be together. How the heck am I going to convince her to take one of my kidneys?”
“Do you think she’d be more open to taking one of mine?”
Justin had never been a crier. Even when his mother had been sick, he’d pushed tears away with medical books and scientific research up until the very end. But hearing his brother offer to donate a kidney to Taylor without even a moment’s hesitation—
Sometimes a guy couldn’t stop himself from choking up.
“Thanks, Drew.” Emotion at the sacrifice his brother was willing to make made his voice rough. “But if Taylor’s going to have a piece of someone inside her, it’s going to be me.”
As brothers who had shared endless dirty jokes as kids, they both had to laugh at the double meaning of his words, but it was muted humor.
“I’m going to tell her I want to be tested to see if I’m a match.” Now that Justin had made up his mind, he was unwavering. “And if I’m a compatible donor, I’m not going to let her say no.”
“Whatever you need,” his brother said, “just let me know.”
Justin looked in the direction the women had gone. “I’ve got to make a couple of calls to get the ball rolling ASAP. Could you distract Ashley and Taylor in case they come back before I’m done?”
He knew without a shadow of a doubt that since Taylor had only just come on board with dating him, she really wasn’t going to be happy about him wanting to be her donor. If she overheard his calls to the transplant center before he had a chance to talk her around to the idea, it wouldn’t help his case one bit to debate it in front of Drew and Ashley.
“No problem,” Drew agreed.
; Justin knew a couple of scientists at the University of California at Davis, which was not only less than an hour away, but also had one of the best kidney-transplant centers in the nation. Thankfully, they were more than happy to connect him with the transplant team, and dropping their names got him an appointment first thing the next morning for the blood tests he and Taylor would have to have to check their compatibility for a transplant.
“Nice work,” Drew said when he put his phone down. “Perfect timing too. Looks like Ash and Taylor are just heading back.”
As he watched the woman he’d always been crazy about laugh with Drew’s fiancée, Justin pushed away every ounce of doubt, letting only hope and love remain. He and Taylor had always been the perfect match for each other. They just needed to be a perfect match again so that he could give her his kidney.
He refused to accept any other possibility.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
As Taylor got into Justin’s car, she felt much more relaxed than she had an hour ago, thanks to the fresh air, beautiful scenery, and laughter with good friends.
She had just reached for Justin’s hand when he turned to her from the driver’s seat. “We’ve got an appointment for blood tests tomorrow morning with the transplant team at UC Davis.”
Wait, what did he just say? He wanted to donate a kidney to her?
Of everything she’d thought they’d be talking about on their drive back to her B&B, this was nowhere on the list. After all, she’d only just wrapped her head around dating him when they both knew her health was in rapid decline. But to let him give her one of his kidneys?
Had he hit his head on something when she and Ashley had left to check out the guest house?
Taylor’s brain—and her heart—were full of so many conflicting thoughts and emotions that, instead of being able to clearly break down all the reasons he couldn’t do this for her, she said, “I can’t go tomorrow morning. I have to make breakfast for guests.”
As if Justin would reply, Well, sure, if you need to make breakfast, then why don’t we both forget about my offer to donate a kidney to you.
“Maddie is going to come up from the city to take care of breakfast and anything else you need done while we’re at Davis.”
Taylor knew she should be grateful. A live donor had the potential to make all the difference in the world, but the waiting list had over 100,000 people on it—and it could take seven to ten years for her to make it to the top.
But she was already terrified of hurting Justin simply by getting sicker and sicker due to her disease. She couldn’t imagine the depths of her grief, her guilt, if he ended up being a compatible donor and then something happened to him during surgery, or after.
Again, however, she couldn’t think in a line straight enough to say anything rational. Instead, what came out was, “I can’t believe you arranged all this behind my back while I was with Ashley.”
“I’m not going to apologize. Not for wanting to donate one of my kidneys to you. And not for loving you either.” To back up his words, he leaned over and kissed her—a kiss that sent just as many zings of pleasure through her as his offer to help her in the most profound way possible had sent zings of confusion and conflict through her. “I’m not going to lose you now, Taylor. Especially when I know that you love me and you know that I love you. I’m in this with you all the way, no matter what. So as long as there’s even a ghost of a chance that I can donate to you, I’ll take it.”
Forcing herself to take some deep breaths, she worked to bend her wayward thoughts back into straight lines. Justin obviously wasn’t going to back down about the two of them getting blood tests to see if he was a match. And the truth was that she would have insisted on the very same thing if she had been in his shoes.
Finally, she said, “I’ll go and get tested with you.”
But all the while, she’d hold on to the hope that Justin wouldn’t be a compatible donor. Because if he was, she’d have to make the most difficult decision of her life.
* * *
For the next several hours, Taylor was busy serving and then clearing up afternoon tea. A new couple checked in, and the Belmonts, who had already met with a local Realtor, wanted Taylor’s opinion on the properties they’d seen. Her mother called a couple of times, but she’d let both calls go through to voice mail, instead sending a text that said, Super busy, but doing good. Will call you tomorrow. Her day had been such a roller-coaster ride that she didn’t think she could pull off a normal conversation with her mom just yet—not when she was certain that Caroline Cardenes would instantly know what her daughter had been doing, and who she’d been doing it with, from nothing more than the sound of her voice.
Unfortunately, Justin Morrison had always been a tricky subject with her mother…
If only Caroline could see how good he was with Sophie and Addison as they sold lemonade and cookies on the sidewalk at a stand he’d hammered together from some leftover lumber at the back of her property. He was such a natural with kids. And she was happy that the Belmont children had distracted him from his computer. All too soon, she and Justin would be back in the deep end at the transplant center tomorrow morning.
After the lemonade stand sold out of its goodies, the kids went off to dinner in town with their parents. She and Justin ate chowder and cornbread, and once they’d finished eating, they sat out in her yard, with only the crickets for company and the moon shining full and round in the night sky.
Anyone looking at the couple holding hands in the moonlight would think everything was perfect. They would never be able to guess at the turmoil roiling just below the surface—or the fact that Taylor’s day had been full not only of more love than she’d ever known it was possible to feel, but also more confusion that she ever wanted to have to face.
Last night, she’d let herself be swept away in the magic of being with Justin at last, the heady romance of his kisses, the sinfully sweet culmination of years of longing. Tonight, she needed Justin’s love to wrap around her and fill up her reserves. Reserves that were running perilously low.
Before she could say a word, he was pulling her up from her seat. “I can’t wait to make love with you again. Not another second.”
“I can’t wait either,” she replied, relief filling every word.
She should have guessed that he would be feeling the same way, should have known that for all his confident words about helping her win her battles, his reserves would be just as low as hers.
Hand in hand, they all but ran through the garden to her cottage. Last night, when the floodgates had opened, she’d let her body soar, but she’d tried to keep hold of her heart.
Tonight, her heart was in charge. Where it went, her body would follow.
Once they were inside, she leaped into his arms, kissing him with all the love that filled her.
Lost in his kiss, it took her longer than it should have to realize how gently he was holding her. Too gently. As though she might break at any moment.
“Justin.” She slid down his body, no longer afraid to give free rein to her sensuality. Not with him. “You don’t need to treat me like porcelain.” She followed up her words with a rough tug at his shirt, pulling it out of his jeans and over his head. “I don’t want you to hold anything back,” she urged as she deftly undid his belt and zipper. “I want you to show me how much you want me.”
“So damned much.” He growled the words against her lips as he captured her jaw in his hands and held her captive with his kiss. And yet, when he lifted his mouth from hers, she saw the same concern in his eyes that she felt in his hands on her hips. “But I need to be careful with you.”
She understood why he felt that way. After all, the shadow of fear had underlain nearly every moment of every day since she’d collapsed at the town hall. Until last night, when Justin had swept away everything but pleasure for a few precious hours.
There were going to be countless big battles to fight during the day, but she refused to let those battles st
eal their nights too. Nothing, she vowed, was going to darken the beauty she and Justin had found together in each other’s arms.
“Trust me to know my limits. I promise you I won’t push past them.”
He gazed into her eyes for several long moments. Weighing. Assessing. Fighting with himself—with his desires and his worries. Finally, he nodded. “Wherever you take me, I’ll follow.”
She wanted to grab, to devour, to greedily gobble him up. But she needed him to trust her, to truly believe that she wouldn’t put herself in harm’s way during their lovemaking.
Still, just because she was going to go slow, didn’t mean she wanted him to keep his clothes on. Last night, she’d let him strip her while he remained clothed. Tonight, things were going to go in the opposite direction.
With his zipper already down, she needed only to give his jeans a tug for them to fall. His boxers went too, which meant that his gorgeous, tanned, muscular body was now fully at her disposal.
Joy—and a huge rush of sensual anticipation—bubbled up inside of her as she ran her hands over his chest. Muscles and tendons jumped beneath her fingertips, prompting her to press kisses all over his delicious skin. “You’re the yummiest thing I’ve ever tasted.” She couldn’t wait to take another taste, this time with her tongue in all the places she’d kissed.
His hands, which had slid into her hair, tightened. Though he was still gentle, she liked feeling his control slipping. Little by little, she intended to keep drawing away his self-control until he forgot everything but desire.
Moving slowly enough that he’d have no reason for alarm, she went to her knees in front of him, letting her nails drag lightly over his skin as she made her way down his body.
Oh my. He was beautiful.
Beyond beautiful.
Pleasure hummed in her throat as her lips made contact with his hot skin. And when her tongue shot out of its own volition to run a wet path up his flesh, he was so wonderfully, deliciously hard that her hum of pleasure turned into a full-on moan.
“Taylor.” His fingers gripped her even more tightly as he tried to hold on to his control. But she could feel his hips wanting to move. Knew how badly he wanted to take what she so desperately wanted to give.