The Inconvenient Laws of Attraction
Page 17
‘It does, does it?’
She nodded. ‘Uh-huh.’
‘Me, too.’ He smiled in reply.
Liv took a small step forward, their bodies inches apart. ‘We have a pretty great time making up.’
‘Yes, we do.’ He looked deep into her eyes. ‘But it won’t always be the solution to everything. We’ll both have to work at this.’
‘We will,’ she agreed.
‘But so long as you’re happy, I’m happy, and if there’s anything within my power to give you than you’ll damn well let me give you—’
‘Never thought I’d say this, but could you stop talking for a minute?’ She smiled the smile he hadn’t wanted to understand until he was searching for something he desperately needed to be there. ‘The answer is still yes. I don’t need to think about it and I don’t need to take it slow. Now we’ve fixed the communication problem I think we can get through anything together. Neither of us is perfect. Thing is, I don’t want perfect. Just as well really, considering I’m in love with you and you can be a giant pain in the—’
‘You have no idea how much I missed you,’ he said hoarsely, what he could see in her eyes and hear in her voice banishing the last of the emptiness within him and filling it with warmth and light and more love than he had ever thought he could feel for another human being.
‘I do if it’s half as much as I missed you.’ Tears shimmered in her eyes again as she laid a hand on his chest, directly over his thundering heart. ‘I was miserable without you.’
Framing her face with his hand, he caught a tear with the tip of his thumb as it spilled from the corner of her eye. ‘Me, too. In case you hadn’t got it already, I love you, Liv. I’ve never loved anyone the way I love you. I never will. You’re it for me. No more hiding, no more secrets from here on in— What’s wrong?’
He frowned as she leaned back and grimaced.
‘I found the letter from your father. When we were packing, it fell out of your pocket.’
Wait. ‘Was that what happened? There was something about the letter that bothered you?’
‘No—’ she shook her head ‘—I wanted to ask you about it, but I couldn’t. Every time you shared something with me and I felt closer to you, there was more to lose. I thought I could distance myself and shut off my emotions, but it was too late. I’m strong, Blake, but…’
‘I know you are.’
‘Not all the time. I thought letting you go would be easier than watching you leave, but it wasn’t.’
‘Come here.’
When she stepped in to him and wrapped her arms around his waist, he held her close and frowned at the shudder running through her body. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘Emotional overload,’ she said against his chest. ‘I might have held it all inside for too long.’
‘You don’t have to hold anything back from me.’
‘Because you looked so happy when I got weepy?’
‘Cry, laugh out loud, yell your head off if you need to let something out—I want it all, Liv.’
‘Remember you said that the next time I yell at you.’ He heard her smile. ‘Now tell me about the letter.’
Blake laid his cheek against her hair. ‘I carried it too long. Wasn’t ready to read it or didn’t want to face what was in it when I heard he was gone; doesn’t really matter now. I carried a lot of things around for too long. I read it. A lot of it I expected, some of it I didn’t. He mentioned the will—you can look at it if you like.’
‘No. It’s the last letter from a father to his son.’
‘Explains a lot about my relationship with him I’d like you to know. I want you to know everything in the same way I want to know everything about you.’
‘We have time.’ She smiled as she leaned back and her gaze met his. Her feelings glowed in her eyes as she pressed an all too brief kiss to his mouth. ‘I love you.’
‘I love you, too.’ He smiled back and leaned in for a more meaningful kiss; the kind that reminded him how long it had been since they’d shared a bed and made him want to get to one so he could demonstrate more eloquently how he felt when three small words didn’t feel like enough.
She sighed when he lifted his head. ‘You better come meet the rest of the family before they send out a search party and find us making out.’
‘We’ll tell them we just got engaged.’ He thought about the ring he’d been carrying around in his pocket for more than a week—the past replaced by his hope for the future. It was tempting to give it to her since she’d already said yes and she didn’t have a hope in hell of ever taking it back, but he had plans for when he put that ring on her finger. Ones that didn’t involve a public place or an audience…
She laughed softly. ‘This soon? No, we won’t. They’ll think I’m pregnant.’
‘I’m willing to work on that.’ He grinned. ‘And since you’re using up all the vacation time you’ve saved over the last few years instead of working on one of those big litigation cases you talked about when you dumped me…’
‘Oh, my God—’ she rolled her eyes as she leaned back ‘—is there anything my brothers didn’t tell you?’
‘Not much after I’d dropped a couple of hands.’
‘Don’t do that again,’ she warned as he reached for the birthday present he’d left at her feet. ‘They won’t respect you for it.’
‘I’ll keep that in mind when they come to our place for poker night.’ He kept hold of her hand as they walked around the tree.
‘You’re going to tell me about Canada now, right?’
‘When we’re married and you can’t testify against me.’
‘Blake.’
‘Yes?’
‘Blake.’
He stopped and turned towards her, allowing the meaning to seep into his soul as he heard ‘I want you’ wrapped in ‘I love you’ and knew with a certainty he hoped all men felt when the time came to settle and put down roots, he’d found his place in the world. Wherever she was would be home for the rest of his life.
‘I hear you,’ he said roughly. She’d spoken to him from the start, even when she wasn’t using words. ‘And for the record, I’m your man, Liv. I always will be.’
All it had taken was for her to come find him when he hadn’t known he was looking.
* * * * *
ISBN: 9781459223240
Copyright © 2011 by Trish Wylie
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