by Gina Wilkins
She cleared her throat. “Say something,” she prodded.
“I don’t know what to say,” he confessed. “I’m still having trouble believing you’re here.”
“I’m here. And I’m waiting.” She tapped her watch.
“You’re waiting for me to give you a reason to stay here with me—hours away from everyone you know and love. Away from your parents, your brother, your nieces, your aunts, uncles, cousins, even your horse.”
“Now you’re catching on,” she said in approval. “As you can imagine, it’s going to take a powerful argument.”
“I don’t have one,” he replied simply. “I can’t imagine why you’d want to give up everything you have there to move here.”
Her heart plummeted. Okay, she told herself. She had her answer. If Kyle had really fallen as hard for her as she had for him, he’d have at least made a token effort to keep her with him. He had to know she wouldn’t have come all the way here if she hadn’t wanted him to talk her into staying.
She reached for her coat again. This time, he let her pick it up and fold it over her arm. “Then I guess there’s nothing more to say.”
He let her get all the way to the door before he said, “I can give you a long list of reasons why you should go home. Why you deserve a hell of a lot more than anything I could offer you here.”
Her hand was already on the doorknob. “I’m not interested in that list, thank you. I’ve pretty well figured those things out for myself.”
“I couldn’t list them all in just two minutes, anyway,” he murmured, making no move to detain her. “There are probably a hundred reasons why you should go back to Texas. And only one reason why you should stay.”
She froze, unable to look around at him, her heart starting to pound again. “That’s the one I would like to hear,” she whispered. “Why, Kyle?”
“Because I want you to. That’s hardly a powerful enough argument to convince you.”
She looked at him then, turning her head very slowly to study his somber expression. “That depends on why you want me to stay.”
He started to speak, then sighed and shook his head. “I can’t do this. Go back to Texas, Molly.”
She sighed impatiently. “You’re deciding what’s best for me again?”
“Someone has to, damn it,” he snapped, half turning away. “Before you end up making a reckless mistake that’s going to get you hurt.”
She let her coat fall to the floor, taking a determined step toward him. “You know what? I don’t think it’s me you’re worried about getting hurt. I think this is all about you again.”
That just seemed to irritate him more. “If that were true, I wouldn’t trying to send you home when what I really want to do is keep you here.”
“Why?” she challenged him, stepping in front of him so she could see his expression. “Why do you want me to stay?”
“Because I—”
“Why, Kyle?” she asked more quietly now.
His eyes were so tortured when she looked into them that her heart suddenly twisted. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to tell her, she realized suddenly. It was that he couldn’t say the words. He simply didn’t know how.
“Let me help you.” She reached up to touch his cheek, her fingertips lingering lovingly on the scar that was merely a symbol of how much he had suffered and lost. “I think you want me to stay because you love me. You’re afraid to admit it because loving someone makes you vulnerable again to being hurt. And you aren’t sure you can survive being hurt again, the way you’ve been hurt so many times before.”
He reached up to catch her hand, holding her fingers so tightly that she almost winced. His eyes were dark, his jaw so taut she saw a muscle jump spasmodically beneath his scar. “What makes you think you know how I feel?”
“Because I love you,” she answered boldly. “And I think I got to know you pretty well in the days we spent together.”
“We were together less than two weeks,” he argued roughly. “That isn’t enough time to fall in love.”
“Oh.” Disappointed, she let her hand fall. “I understand if it wasn’t enough time for you. I suppose I was taking a lot for granted….”
“I think I fell in love with you when you stood out on my deck in the middle of a rainstorm and told me how beautiful it was to you,” he said, his voice so hoarse it didn’t even sound like his own. “The wind was blowing your hair, and your nose and cheeks were pink from the cold, and that same storm had stranded you up here on that mountain for the night, but you looked completely entranced—exactly the way I feel every time I look out my back door.”
Joy exploded inside her. Breaking into a smile, she reached out for him.
Kyle quickly sidestepped her, shaking his head fiercely. “It’s because I love you that I can’t let you stay. You would never be happy here, away from your family. And I couldn’t stand knowing that you would rather be there than here with me. Go back to Texas, Molly. Find someone who has more to offer you.”
“Oh, put a sock in it, Kyle,” she said, her smile fading into a scowl.
His expression might have amused her had she not been so annoyed with him. “What?”
“It’s something Jewel told me to say whenever some smug, self-righteous, impossibly arrogant male starts making decisions for my sake because he doesn’t think I’m mature enough to know my own mind,” she informed him loftily. “If you want me to go, that’s one thing. Have the courage to say so. But if you want me to stay, and you’re sending me away out of some noble, self-sacrificing gesture for my own good, then you’re going to find yourself with a fight on your hands.”
He looked almost stunned, then—and she wasn’t sure if it was due to the fact that she’d stood up to him, or if there was more to it. She suspected the latter when he muttered rather dazedly, “That sounds exactly like something Tommy would say.”
“I think I would have liked Tommy.”
He sighed. “I know you would have.”
“I wish I’d had the chance to meet him. I wish you’d never had to lose your best friend that way. I wish you’d had a happier experience with your parents so you would have learned to be more trusting, and to be more confident that you deserved to be happy. But this is the hand we’ve been dealt, Kyle. Are you going to fold— or are you going to stay in the game and take a chance at finally coming out a winner?”
She met his eyes without flinching as he stared at her. “And if I do ask you to stay—and then you change your mind?”
“I love this area. It looks like a wonderful place to live, to raise a family. I like your friends, the McDooleys, and I would enjoy getting to know them as well as you do. I’m sure I can find a teaching job within a reasonable commute. Any time I need to see my family, all I would have to do is get into a car or hop on a plane, the way I did this morning. In the meantime, there are telephones and e-mail to let me stay in touch with them. I’m already aware of all those facts, Kyle. So now I want to hear the final argument about whether I should stay or go. Give me a good reason to stay, and I’ll tell you if it’s enough to convince me.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “I’ve already admitted that I love you.”
Her heart jumped in response to hearing the words again, but she continued to look at him steadily. “I know, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am.”
He planted his hands on his slender hips. “Still not enough?”
She shook her head, thinking that if she stayed the first thing she was going to do was to make him start eating more. He seemed to have lost weight again since he’d left Texas.
“How about if I ask you to marry me? To make a home with me here in the mountains?”
Her smile felt radiant, but still she held back. “You’re getting a lot closer.”
He reached out to place his hands on her shoulders, and his own expression was entirely serious when he said, “Would it be enough for me to tell you that I need you the way I never thought I would need anyone? That I can
’t imagine spending the rest of my life here without you? And that I’m willing to get down on my knees and beg, if that’s what it would take to convince you?”
“That’s what I wanted to hear,” she whispered, gazing up at him through a sudden film of tears. “I needed to know that I wasn’t the only one willing to risk everything—my heart, my pride, my dignity—anything necessary to give us a chance to be together.”
“You aren’t the only one,” he assured her, tugging her into his arms. “I’m done being noble, Molly. Stay here with me. I promise I’ll do everything I can to make you happy.”
“We’ll make each other happy,” she promised against his lips. “Whatever might come, however long we might have together, we’ll make the most of it, because we’ll know how lucky we are to have found each other.”
As Kyle’s lips settled firmly over hers, sealing the promises they had made to each other, Molly had the oddest feeling that the house itself was watching them with an approval that bordered on intense satisfaction. Very strange, she thought, losing herself in Kyle’s kiss. Apparently, just kissing him made her half-delirious.
They were going to have a most interesting—and most amazingly happy—life together, she thought in eager anticipation, snuggling more closely against him.
They both deserved nothing less.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2214-4
THE ROAD TO REUNION
Copyright © 2006 by Gina Wilkins
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† Family Found: Sons & Daughters
**Hot Off the Press
§Family Found
‡The Family Way
*The McClouds of Mississippi