Heated Rush - Leslie Kelly [75]
Someday he’d go back there. Now that he had someone he wanted to show it to.
Realizing how quickly that sky was darkening, he glanced at his watch. He’d been standing here at the top of a beach crossover for a long time. Annie’s flight had been scheduled to land in Boston a few hours ago, and the car he’d had waiting for her at the airport should have had her here by now. If she’d been on the plane.
He hadn’t even turned his cell phone on, not wanting to get a call from the driver saying she hadn’t come. He’d preferred to wait, to stick it out, relying on his certainty that she’d show up, that she wanted this as much as he did.
That she’d understood his letters.
Lost in the rhythmic surge of the surf and the whiteness of the nearly deserted beach, Sean began thinking of the words he would use to describe the precise moment when the light disappeared. In case she didn’t see it for herself. In case she wasn’t ready and he was forced to keep waiting…keep writing.
In case he’d been wrong.
God, how he hoped he hadn’t been wrong.
Fully intent on what he’d do to get her back, he was caught completely by surprise when a voice intruded from behind him.
“It’s more beautiful than I ever imagined.”
Sean closed his eyes as Annie’s soft words washed over him, more welcome and delightful and lovely than the salty breeze skimming across the shoreline.
“Yes, it is,” he replied, so relieved he couldn’t even turn around.
He remained still and silent. There was so much to say and he’d thought many times of how he’d say it. He needed to tell her where he’d gone, what he’d learned—about himself, about his past, his future. Words to let her know how much he appreciated her faith in him, how glad he was that she had come. Explanations to give about why he’d done what he’d done.
And yet, now, with her warm body moving in close, her soft arms wrapping around his waist from behind, her cheek resting against his back, he wondered if any of them needed to be said at all.
Sean moved his hands to cover hers and they stayed that way, standing motionless on the crossover, for a long time. Until the sun had set, the moon had risen, and the only sound was the never-ending churning of the waves lapping the shore.
And in the shared silence, everything was communicated even though all the words drifted away unsaid.
All but three.
Slowly turning around, Sean looked down at her beautiful face, touching a strand of her moon-kissed hair. And he smiled. Bending toward her, he hesitated for the briefest moment before bringing his lips to hers.
Long enough to whisper those three words. “I love you.”
Epilogue
Five Months Later
“ANNIE, SEAN, HURRY up, you’re going to be late to your own engagement party!”
Annie, who’d just stepped into her fiancé’s arms and lifted hers around his neck so she could draw him down for a kiss, sighed at the sound of her mother’s raised voice. She supposed she should be grateful that they’d managed a whole half-hour alone in her old bedroom on the third floor before propriety demanded that somebody from her family interrupt.
“I don’t suppose there’s any escaping?” she asked.
Sean smiled, kissed her on the tip of her nose and murmured, “No, darlin’, no escape. You’re mine, now.”
Liking the way he’d purposely misunderstood her, Annie closed her eyes, savoring his touch.
His mouth moved across to her cheek, then down her jaw. Each brush of his lips on her skin elicited a tiny hitch of a sigh in her throat.
She’d known from the start that Sean was capable of great passion. But, oh, the man’s tenderness simply removed the breath from her lungs and filled her with so much lightness she’d swear she could float away.
They’d made love hundreds of times since the night they’d met, and he could still arouse her with a look. But moments like