If I Stay
Page 29
Up to her jawline, where he paused long enough to drink in her scent. Blueberries today. He couldn’t wait to discover what tomorrow would bring.
“And I’d love it if you’d have lunch with me every day in the kitchens.”
Finally, tenderly, on her lips.
“Oh—and you really have to let me do something about your car. I’m getting tired of having to hide it in the corner of the parking lot so no one else can see it.”
Her laughter was a whoosh of warm air against his mouth. “You jerk. This whole time, it’s really been my Rabbit you wanted to get your hands on, isn’t it?”
Not even close. Now that his hands were on Amy, he was pretty sure nothing else in this world could ever compare.
Epilogue
“Are your eyes closed?”
“Sealed tight.”
Amy peeked around the corner to make sure Ryan wasn’t lying. True to his promise, he had his hands over his eyes and a foolishly expectant smile on his face. He looked gruff and out of place and adorable, especially when a little boy walked by with a giant puff of cotton candy on a stick and swiped a blue-sugar slash across Ryan’s side.
The Enchanted Forest hadn’t been his first choice of vacation destination, but he was being an incredible sport about the whole thing. Mostly because the alternative—a Montgomery-Hawthorne family reunion in upstate New York—was a trip she’d decided she could do without.
Her blood might come from there, but her heart was exactly where it belonged.
Besides—it was the least he could do after leaving for three weeks to shoot that Len Brigand film, Fiery Passions. It sounded a lot more like a soap opera than an action flick, if you asked her, but he’d come home with a huge bruise along his rib cage and the glowing look of a man who’d driven a car off a rooftop or two.
He’d signed a contract for three movies a year. No more, no less. Enough to keep his blood pumping, not so much he’d lose sight of home. They were even talking about Amy taking a few weeks off the next time to go with him.
She couldn’t wait to see him in action. To prop him up in the glittering, fast-paced world that had shaped him.
“Okay.” She stepped out from behind the oversized concrete tree painted to resemble the real thing. This one had a face on it, which would spontaneously break out in animatronic expressions of serenity and ancient tree wisdom. “I’m ready, but you have to promise there will be no laughing, no mocking and definitely no inappropriate behavior.”
Ryan paused in the act of removing his hands. “Is there a chance I might be tempted to do that last one?”
“Well, I do look pretty amazing in this dress.” Even though he couldn’t see her, she gave a twirl to prove it. “And you wouldn’t believe how many secret coves there are in the place. If you bribe one of the security guards, he’ll give you a detailed map. There’s this one spot, in the Mermaid Grotto—”
He groaned. “You better stop while you still can.”
“But I think you’ll really like it there. There are mirrors and everything.”
“Now you’re just being cruel.” Ryan dropped his hands and blinked. And blinked again. And once more for good measure.
In front of him stood a vision in pink tulle and fairy wings. He knew, from the stirrings of lust that started in his groin and spiked through every nerve ending he possessed, that it was Amy inside that dress. Amy, corseted up and splashed with glitter and every inch a member of the theme park royalty. Amy, loving a chance to dress up and play pretend, to recapture the joys of childhood that were never very far from her imagination.
But there was no way he was defiling her in this place.
A stream of kids gasped their surprise at her sudden appearance and rushed to greet her. They all seemed to want to touch her dress and pet her hair and get their photos taken—something he could hardly blame them for. He wanted to touch her dress and pet her hair, and he wasn’t averse to a photo shoot with just the two of them and that particular outfit. And he got to see her almost every day of his life.
Sorry, she mouthed as she was overtaken by requests.
Ryan stepped back and let her fall into her natural role. It was a role he was rapidly coming to recognize as one she would never be able to fully shed. Kids loved her. Adults trusted her. She was the ray of sunshine everyone wanted in their life, if only for the short space of one of her smiles beaming down on them from afar.
And she was his.
Or rather, she would be, as soon as the park closed for the night. Then there was nothing but the two of them, the open sky and a week-long road trip in a Triumph TR250 he’d built with his own two hands.
He was finally moving again.
But this time, he knew it wasn’t the forward momentum so much as the woman by his side that made all the difference. She made all the difference in the world.
* * * * *
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About the Author
Tamara Morgan is a contemporary romance author of humorous, heartfelt stories with flawed heroes and heroines designed to get your hackles up and make your heart melt. Her long-lived affinity for romance novels survived a BA degree in English literature, after which time she discovered it was much more fun to create stories than analyze the life out of them.
Whether building Victorian dollhouses, consuming mass quantities of coffee and wine, or crying over cheesy 1950s musicals, Tamara commits to her flaws like every good heroine should. She lives in the Inland Northwest with her husband, daughter and variety of household pets, and only occasionally complains about the weather.
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ISBN-13: 9781426898198
IF I STAY
Copyright © 2014 by Tamara Morgan
Edited by Deborah Nemeth
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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