He arched a dark brow, obviously having heard her.
“Eh, I think that conversation might have to wait. He looks a little perturbed.” My grip tightened on the door handle simply to keep myself standing. Self-preservation demanded I look away from those dark brown eyes, but the laws of magnetics wouldn’t let me.
“Wait, you’re not kidding, are you?” Her voice lost all its humor.
“Nope.”
“Bye!” She hung up, leaving me on my own, staring down the barrel of an incredibly annoyed Noah.
“Are you going to let me in?” he asked, tucking his thumbs into his pockets. It should have been criminal to look as good as he did.
“Are you going to yell at me?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Okay, then.” I stepped back as he walked in. I closed the door, then leaned back against it.
He pivoted in the entry, leaving only a few steps between us. That distance was too much and not enough all in the same breath.
“I thought you were going to call me when you got back,” I started weakly. I’d been prepared for a lot of things today, but seeing him wasn’t one of them, not that I was complaining.
He narrowed his eyes, then reached into his back pocket and whipped out his cell, pushing two buttons.
My phone rang.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, spotting his name on the screen.
He raised his phone to his ear in blatant challenge.
I rolled my eyes but answered it.
“Hi, Georgia,” he said, his voice dropping low and turning my insides to mush. “I’m back.”
“When did that happen?” I asked. My cheeks heated as I realized I was actually talking to him on the phone in the middle of my foyer.
He flat-out smirked.
“Ugh,” I groaned and we both holstered our phones in our back pockets. “Answer the question.”
“Eighteen hours ago,” he replied, shoving the sleeves of his sweater up his forearms. “Six of which I’ve slept. I spent one figuring out what you’d done, then a total of eleven booking a flight, getting to the airport, actually flying, renting a car, and driving all the way from Denver.”
“Fair enough.”
“Have you had enough time?” He stuck his thumbs in his pockets again. “Or would you still like me to leave you alone?”
“Me?” I squeaked. “You were the one who disappeared. I figured you’d be back in a week, maybe two, not six. You could have called and told me. Sent an update or a carrier pigeon. Something.”
“You told me you were taking time and to call when I got back. Those are some pretty specific instructions, Georgia, and it fucking killed me to follow them.”
“Oh.”
“Why did you change the ending of the book?” he asked abruptly.
Here we go. “Oh, right. That.” I folded my arms under my breasts, wishing I’d chosen something a little better than jeans and a long-sleeved tee. This conversation called for armor…or lingerie.
“Yes. That.” He lifted his brows. “Why did you change it?”
“Because I love you!”
His eyes flared.
“Because I love you,” I repeated, this time managing not to yell. “And you were right about the ending. I was wrong. And I didn’t want to trash your career because I was being bitter and cold and sharp—”
He was on me before I finished the sentence, his body pressing mine against the door, his hands in my hair, his mouth kissing me into blissful oblivion.
God, I’d missed this—missed him. I kissed him back with everything I had, lacing my arms behind his neck as he picked me up, one hand under each thigh. I locked my ankles at the small of his back. Closer. I needed to be closer.
Over and over, he took my mouth with deep, swirling strokes of his tongue, setting me on fire like a match dropped into a pool of gasoline—like a lightning strike to tinder.
“Wait,” he said against my mouth, then jerked back like I’d bitten him. “We can’t do this yet.” His chest heaved.
“What?” My feet found the floor, and a heartbeat later, he was in the center of the foyer with his hands laced over his head. “What are you doing?”
“This all went to shit before because I hid something from you.”
“Awkward time to point that out, but okay.” I leaned back against the door, struggling to catch my breath. He hadn’t been the only one to keep secrets. “I guess in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I can have kids.”
“I thought…” His brow knit, two little lines appearing in his forehead. “Not that it matters, but that was never an issue for me. Biology isn’t the only way to parent.”
“Well, thank you. But I can. I just…didn’t want to have them with Damian, so I didn’t go off my birth control. Didn’t want to know what kind of mother I’d be in that situation. I also didn’t tell him that.”
“Huh. Okay. Well, I’ve spent the last six weeks between England and the Netherlands.” He fished a small, white envelope out of his front pocket.
“Doing book research. Adam told me.” This was what he’d stopped us for? We could have been naked by now, and he wanted to chat book research?
“Not exactly. I hired a deep-sea exploration company to try to locate Jameson’s plane off the last coordinates from the radio calls that day.”
“You what?”
“I think we found it last week, and by think, I mean I’m pretty damned sure, but there are official channels and a lot of red tape flying around. The Eagles didn’t transfer to the American military until September, and he went down in June, so he was still RAF but an American citizen. No one quite agrees who has jurisdiction.” He turned the envelope over in his fingers.
“But you think you found him?” I asked quietly.
“Yes…and no.” He winced. “It’s a Spitfire, but the identifying markers on the tail have worn off and the wreckage was scattered.”
“Where?”
“Off the coast of the Netherlands. It’s…” He sighed. “It’s too deep to recover the entire wreck, but we sent an ROV down.” He walked slowly toward me. “We found an aluminum panel of the fuselage and what we think was the cockpit, but no…remains.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. To come so close, and yet still not know. “Then why do you think—”
Noah took my hand, palm up, and tipped the envelope into it. A gold ring slid from the paper and into my hand. It was still warm from Noah’s pocket. “Read the inscription.”
“J With love, S.” My throat tightened. “It’s his,” I whispered.
“I think so, too,” Noah agreed, his voice going rough. “And I’ll put it back if you want me to. We were looking for anything that might identify it, and it was right there…like it was waiting to be found, engraving and all. The team I hired said they’d never seen anything like it.”
My fingers closed over the band. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure you’re getting a call this week. American. British. I’m not sure who at this point.” He swallowed. “That wasn’t the only reason I went to England. I know this might piss you off, and I don’t have any proof, but I don’t think…” He shook his head, then took a deep breath and started again. “I think the book—our book—was written by two separate people.”
“That’s because it was.” I smiled slowly, feeling the heavy metal of the wedding band against my palm.
Noah’s eyes widened and his lips parted.
“The oldest pages—the unedited original ones, were written by Scarlett during the war.” I swallowed. “And the newer ones, the edits and additions…those were all made by—”
“Constance,” he guessed.
I nodded. “How did you know? I didn’t until about six weeks ago.” What had he seen that I
hadn’t?
“The book tipped me off. I wouldn’t have figured it out if our book had been the last one she’d written…and not the first. Then, it was the marriage license. She told Damian it took her years to remarry because it didn’t feel like her first marriage was over, which was easily interpreted that she was still in love with Jameson…until I found the death certificate for Henry Wadsworth and the years matched up. It wasn’t enough—just a hunch, and I didn’t want to shatter your trust in her without having a damn good reason, but I decided to stop digging before anyone noticed.”
“Gran—Constance told me. She wrote it all down the year before she died and had it delivered. Once I read it, I called you, but you were already gone, so I called Adam.”
“And changed the end of the book.”
I nodded.
“Because you love me.” His eyes searched mine.
“Because I love you, Noah. And because Gran had her happy ending in real life. She fought for it. She didn’t need you to craft it for her—she’d already earned it, already lived it. You gave Scarlett and Jameson the story they deserved. The crash, the evasion, the Dutch Resistance—all of it. You finished a story that fate had wrongfully cut short. Gran…she couldn’t do that. She left it unfinished because she couldn’t let them go—couldn’t let Scarlett go. You set them free.”
He cradled my face in his hands. “I would have done it for you. Would have given you whatever you wanted no matter what anyone else thought.”
“I know,” I whispered. “Because you love me.”
“Because I love you, Georgia, and I’m done living without you. Please don’t make me.”
I wound my arms around his neck and arched to brush my lips across his. “Colorado or New York?”
“Autumn in New York. August and September, at least.” He smiled against my mouth. “Colorado winter, spring, and summer.”
“For the leaves?” I guessed, nipping his lower lip gently.
“For the Mets.”
“Deal.”
Chapter Thirty-Eight
August 1944
Poplar Grove, Colorado
“Be careful around the steps, love,” Scarlett said to William as he toddled along the edge of the newly finished gazebo, his hands gripping the individual spokes of the railing as he went.
He grinned over his shoulder and kept going.
She abandoned the record she’d selected and rushed across the floor, scooping him into her arms just before he reached the stairs. “You’re going to be the death of me, William Stanton.”
William giggled, and she blew a kiss into his neck, then shifted him to her hip as she walked back to the phonograph. The fall breeze rippled her dress, and she tucked her hair to the side to keep it out of William’s grasp. The strands were longer now, falling midway down her back, her own personal calendar for how long it had been since she’d kissed Jameson goodbye in Ipswich.
Two years, and no word…but no remains, either, so she held on to hope and the spark of certainty that flared to life in her chest when she thought of him. He was alive. She knew it. She wasn’t sure where or how, but he was. He had to be.
“Which one should we listen to, poppet?” she asked their son, setting him down in front of the small collection of records on the table. He picked one at random, and she put it on. “Glenn Miller. Excellent choice.”
“Apples!”
“Right you are.” The sound of The Glenn Miller Orchestra filled the space as she led William to the blanket she’d spread out on the far end. They snacked on apples and cheese—she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to how much food was available here in the States, but she wasn’t complaining. They were lucky.
There were no air-raid sirens. No bombs. No boards to plot. No blackouts. They were safe. William was safe.
She prayed every night that both Jameson and Constance would be, too. Her fingers brushed over the small scar on her palm, thinking of its match in England. Had the cut above her sister’s eye scarred over, too? She’d been bleeding when she forced them onto the plane that day the bombs had blasted them out of the street in Ipswich, barely sparing the three of them.
She’d packed up two new dresses for her sister yesterday and shipped them off. It had been nearly a year since Henry had slipped on the staircase and broken his fool neck, and according to her last letter, she’d met a handsome American GI who was serving in the Army Veterinary Corp.
William lay down on the blanket, and Scarlett ran her hands through his thick, dark hair as he drifted into an afternoon nap, his lips parting in sleep just like Jameson’s. When she was certain he was out, she untangled herself carefully, then made her way back to the record player.
She knew she’d pay for the indulgence later, that she’d miss him even more, but she changed out the record for Ella Fitzgerald anyway. Her heart stuttered as the familiar song began to play, and for that moment, she wasn’t in the middle of the Colorado Rockies, and those weren’t golden aspen leaves swaying in the mountain breeze all around them—no, those were the tips of long summer grass in an overgrown field just outside Middle Wallop.
She closed her eyes and swayed, allowing herself one moment to imagine he was there, holding out his hand as he asked her to dance.
“Need a partner?”
She gasped softly, her eyes flying open at the sound of the voice she’d know anywhere. The voice she’d only heard in her dreams for the last two years. But there was only the phonograph before her, William asleep on the floor beside her, and the rush of the creek as it bent around them.
“Scarlett,” he said again.
Behind her.
She spun, her dress whipping against her legs in the breeze, and quickly tugged her hair out of her eyes to clear her field of vision.
Jameson filled the entrance to the gazebo, leaning against the support beam, his hat tucked under his arm, his uniform new but travel-worn, no longer RAF, but United States Army Air Force. His smile widened as their eyes locked.
“Jameson,” she whispered, her hands flying to her mouth. Was she dreaming? Would she wake before she could touch him? Tears pricked at her eyes as her heart warred with logic.
“No, baby, no.” Jameson strode across the space, his hat falling to the deck below. “God, don’t cry.” He cradled her face in his hands, wiping the tears away with his thumbs.
His hands were warm. Solid. Real.
“You’re really here,” she cried, her fingers trembling as she grazed his chest, his neck, the line of his jaw. “I love you. I thought I’d never get to tell you that again.”
“God, I love you, Scarlett. I’m here,” he promised, his gaze sweeping over her hungrily, starved for the sight of her, the feel of her against him. Years and miles, battles and crash landings hadn’t changed a single thing, hadn’t dimmed his love for her. “I’m here,” he repeated, because he needed to hear it, too. Needed to know they’d made it against all the odds that had come their way.
…
He tilted her face toward his and kissed her long and slow, breathing her in, tasting apples and home and Scarlett. His Scarlett.
“How?” she asked, locking her fingers behind his neck.
“A lot of luck.” He rested his forehead against hers and wrapped one arm around her waist, tugging her close. “And a really long story that involves a broken leg, a resistance operative who took mercy on me, and some very accommodating cows who didn’t mind a hidden roommate for three months while my leg healed.”
She huffed a laugh, shaking her head. “But you’re okay?”
“I am now.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and splayed his hand wide over her lower back. “I missed you every single day. Everything I did was to get home to you.”
Her shoulders buckled as a sob slipped past her lips, and his throat closed around the lump that had formed the second he’d seen her swaying w
ith the breeze, waiting where the creek bent around the aspen grove.
“It’s okay. We made it.”
“Do you have to go back?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“No.” He tilted her chin and fell headfirst into those blue eyes. God, no matter how detailed his memories, how perfect his dreams, nothing had come close to how beautiful his wife was. “I couldn’t get out until Maastricht was liberated. I spent a year fighting in secret with the Dutch Resistance, and I know too much for them to chance me being captured, which means the only planes I’ll be flying belong to my uncle, right here.”
“So it’s over?” she asked, her voice edged with the same desperation he felt.
“It’s over. I’m home.” He kissed her again, sinking into her mouth as she gripped the lapels of his uniform, tugging him closer.
“You’re home.” She smiled, wide and brilliant.
He dipped, locking his arms at the backs of her thighs, and lifted her to his eye level. Then he kissed her until he’d reacquainted himself with every line and curve of her mouth.
A rustle caught his attention, and his breath stuttered at the sight of William asleep on the blanket, his hand tucked beneath his head. Slowly, he set Scarlett down. “He’s so big.”
She nodded. “He’s perfect. Do you want to wake him?” Her eyes danced.
Jameson swallowed, his throat and chest tight as he glanced between his dreaming son and the love of his life. Perfect. It was all perfect, and better than anything he’d imagined during the long, empty nights and battle-torn days. He sank his hands into the silk of Scarlett’s hair and grinned at his wife. “In a few minutes.”
Her smile was slow as she leaned up for another kiss.
“In a few minutes,” she agreed.
He was home.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Georgia
Three years later
I smiled and read the last page once more before whispering a quiet goodbye to Jameson and Scarlett. Then I shut the book and returned to the real world, where my real husband was currently getting ready to launch his new book four aisles over.
The Things We Leave Unfinished Page 42