Running from Fate
Page 27
She reached the door and took a deep, cleansing breath before pulling it open. Her mouth didn’t fall open, but it was a close thing. There stood James Kelly, looking somewhat thin and very agitated, but so beautiful to her starved senses that it made her eyes hurt. She fought the urge to hurl herself into his arms and, instead, walked calmly onto the porch, pulling the door shut behind her. “James,” she murmured. “What are you doing here?”
He held up a badly wrinkled letter and waved it in her face. “This,” he said curtly, “is why I’m here. I don’t hear from you for almost two months and when I do, it’s a damn resignation.” Too agitated to stand still, he started walking, pacing the width of the porch, from the rail to the door and back again. “Couldn’t you have at least had the courtesy to tell me in person?”
Her skin was tingling and she ached to touch him, but couldn’t. He hadn’t come because he missed her, he was here because she was quitting. The nerve of the man. “You talk about courtesy,” she retorted. “I’ve been waiting to hear something from you for two months. If you wanted to break up with me, couldn’t you have had the nerve to do it in person?”
“What are you talking about?” James stopped his pacing and stood in front of her. He noticed two little faces pressed against the front window, watching them in fascination. He reached over and grabbed Mira’s arm, pulling her off the front porch and crossing the yard at a fast clip. When he reached the end of a pasture where two beautiful, elegant Chestnuts dozed in the sun, he stopped and faced her. “You were the one who said you needed time,” he said, daring her to deny it. He could still feel the pain of those words, cutting him in two.
Mira closed her eyes and tried to think where he could have come up with that idea. She had a sneaky suspicion that Lily had something to do with it. “I never said I needed time,” she said carefully, watching his eyes as they turned from angry to cautious. “For God’s sake, I told you that I was in love with you. You were the one who backed off.”
“But the note said…”
“I didn’t write it. Lily did.” She was beginning to see that they had both been played and she swore to choke her friend when they next met. James, however, was not completely off the hook. “Since when,” she demanded as she poked him in the chest. “Have you ever done what I told you to anyway? And even if I had asked for time, what the hell took you so long?”
His despondency fled as a desperate hope took its place. He stepped forward, trapping her against the fence. “I didn’t know where you were,” he whispered fiercely. “If I had, you wouldn’t have even made it two days before I caught up with you.”
“What are you saying?” Her heart beat frantically, yearning to be free.
It was time to stop running. “You once told me that you loved me,” James said.
She remembered the occasion, painfully. “And you told me that you cared about me like I was just some kind of pet or your kid sister.”
“Say it again,” he pleaded, ignoring her ire and leaning down to caress her ear with his breath. “I promise that you’ll get a different reply.”
She shivered in pleasure and stopped running, allowing fate to have her way. “I love you,” she whispered as she raised her hands to clasp his face.
“I love you too,” he replied softly. “Come home with me,” he begged. “Marry me. Say you’ll make a life with me.”
“Are you sure James?” She didn’t want to agree only to have him hate her later. “You said you would never marry. People weren’t capable of making such a deep commitment.”
He smiled. “A Ghrà, my love, you’ve been mine since the very first time you looked at me, dirt on your hem and longing in your beautiful, green eyes.” He lifted his hand and ran his thumb gently along her cheek, catching a single tear. “Say yes.”
“Yes.” She laughed joyously when he lifted her up and swung her around. “Absolutely yes.”