Confessions of a Small-Town Girl
Page 23
He’d been two weeks into that same operation when his lack of concentration had nearly gotten him shot.
He’d lost his edge. More important, he didn’t care.
Everything he cared about was in Maple Mountain.
He could have told her that. He could have told her what he was supposed to have been doing on the stakeout and what he’d been doing instead. It seemed easiest to cut to the heart of it all.
“You.” He paused at the simple truth of it. “You happened.”
It was because of her that he’d realized how the work that had become his way of life had simply become a way to avoid the parts of his life that hadn’t worked out. He suspected she’d already known that, though, as he moved closer, wanting to erase the quick disbelief in her expression. He needed her to understand that he understood more about himself now than he ever had. What he understood most was that he’d been slowly dying inside—until she’d come along.
She had spoken of breathing life back into the old building rising above them. He’d never realized that, all along, she’d been breathing life back into him.
“When you came back, you knew exactly what you wanted and how you would make it happen. We’d talked about it all. It just hadn’t occurred to me that while you were sharing your dreams for this place, you were making me realize what all I was missing.”
He offered the confession quietly, slowly withdrawing his hands from his pockets. He’d missed her, missed working with her, missed the feeling of working toward something positive. “I want to be around my family.” He missed them, too. “Especially the boys. You were right when you said I might need them as much as they need me,” he conceded, bracing himself. “But I need you more.”
Feeling totally exposed, he watched her dark eyes search his, her slender shoulders rising with the deep breath she drew.
“You had the insight and the courage to change what was wrong about your life.” He remembered how she’d struggled against that change at first, how she’d questioned and fought it. He’d struggled these past weeks, too, fought and denied. In the end, his need to survive had won. “That’s what I’m trying to do with mine now.”
The restlessness that had plagued him since he’d left began to fade even as the tips of his fingers skimmed her cheek. The need to touch her was too strong to avoid. But she didn’t pull from him as he’d feared she might. The relief in her eyes told him she needed that contact as much as he needed it himself.
Drawn by the need she sensed in him, hope shoved hard. She wouldn’t have had that courage without him.
“You’re staying?”
“I am if you’re willing to take a chance with me,” he told her, feeling the tension ease from his body as he slipped his arms around her.
“What if you want to go back to the force?”
“I don’t want to go back,” he insisted, conviction heavy in his tone. “I’ll help out Joe if he needs me, but I want what I found here. If you want time, I’ll go to work out at my uncle’s.” He’d already figured that as his contingency plan. “I always liked working for him. But I’m talking about a real chance, Kelsey. We don’t have to rush into anything. And I know I’m coming out of the blue at you with this. But what I really want is to build this place up with you, and maybe work on a few dreams of our own.
“I want to marry you.” He thought he should warn her of that. “And I’d like to have kids.” She deserved to know that, too. “That’s the kind of chance I’m talking about.”
Kelsey’s heart felt as if it were about to pound out of her chest at the certainty she saw in his eyes. Sam wasn’t a man to speak of family or dreams. He wasn’t a man to make promises he wouldn’t keep. Yet, he’d just told her he wanted her old dream. All of it.
“You said no rush?”
“None.”
Feeling as if she could float right up to her toes, she slipped her arms around his neck. “How long do I get to make up my mind?”
“How long do you think you’d need?”
“Considering that I’ve waited thirteen years for you?” she asked, lifting herself higher. “About a minute.”
There was no mistaking the possessive light that entered his eyes at her admission. That same possession was in his touch as he pulled her against him, and in his kiss as he lowered his head and covered her mouth with his.
It was like coming home. Wrapped in his arms, feeling protected and desired and more cherished than she could have imagined, Kelsey knew she was finally, completely where she needed to be. Yet, as he robbed the strength from her knees and the breath from her lungs, she also knew that it wasn’t the place that filled her with that wonderful sense of belonging. It was the man. She’d just needed to come home to find him.
Just as he’d needed to return to find her.
His hands had somehow worked their way into her hair. With it spilling over his hands, her clip now on the ground, he lifted his head and smiled into her eyes. “Your mom was right.”
“She was?”
“Yeah. She said you were crazy about me.”
She rolled her eyes, tried not to smile. “She did not.”
“Honest. She did. Not a while ago,” he conceded. “But the last time. She said she thought you were falling in love with me.”
Her mother was far more astute than she’d thought. “My mother can’t keep anything to herself.”
“I know,” he muttered, leaning to nuzzle her neck. “I imagine by morning everyone around here will know I love you, too.”
Kelsey went still. Maybe it was because he’d protected his heart so fiercely. Maybe it was because of the cynicism that had always run beneath his deceptive easy manner. It could have even been because the admission would make him vulnerable and being vulnerable wasn’t something a man like him would ever care to be. But she’d never thought she would hear those words from him.
Hearing them now, she lifted her head, her heart shining in her eyes. “You do?”
He smiled his easy smile, the one that had always charmed her. Only now the latent tension behind it was gone. “Yeah. I do. I think it started when I was reading your diary,” he admitted, tightening his hold. “I’d never been the subject of fantasies before.”
Kelsey truly doubted that. He might not have been aware of it, but there were women right here in Maple Mountain who would blush the shade of a beet if he knew what they thought about him. She didn’t doubt women had thought about him in such ways for years.
“Which reminds me,” he murmured, tracing her jaw with his fingers. “What ever happened to it?”
“My diary?” she asked, distracted as his touch drifted down her throat.
“Yeah,” he murmured, seeming distracted, too.
“I still have it.”
“I think I’d like another look at it.” Letting his hand fall, he drew her closer. A devilish light glinted in his eyes. “I still feel pretty partial to July twelfth,” he admitted, shifting her body to better align it with his, “but there may be another fantasy in there I’d like to fulfill.”
She now knew for certain that he’d never read parts of August.
“You know what?” Thirteen years ago, standing in the very spot she stood in now, she never would have thought that her wild imaginings could ever come true. But impossible as it seemed, Sam loved her, he wanted to marry her, to live with her in the mill, to have their children. Tightening her arms around his neck, she smiled against his lips. “You just did.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-2496-4
CONFESSIONS OF A SMALL-TOWN GIRL
Copyright © 2005 by Christine Flynn
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