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“It does. They’re your family.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to talk about them right now.” She opened her mouth to argue but he cut her off. “I will talk about it, I promise. I just don’t want to think about them right now.” He touched a curl at her temple. “I only want to think about you.”
Penny pressed her mouth against his and felt some of his tension melt away as their tongues tangled in a tender, slow kiss.
“Penelope.” His voice was rough with emotion. “I have to tell you something.”
She stilled. “What?”
“I love you.”
“Oh.” She exhaled a relieved laugh. “I love you too.”
A heartrending smile lit his eyes. “You do?”
“Yes!” She clasped his face and kissed him again and again, bursting with happiness. “I’ve been trying to hide it, because I didn’t want to freak you out.”
Caleb gazed intently at her mouth as his fingertips skimmed her lower lip. “I’ve loved you for months. I loved you even before—when you used to come in here and try to talk to me.”
“I still don’t understand why you wouldn’t talk to me.” She nipped his earlobe in gentle retribution.
“I was afraid to let myself get close to you, because I knew I couldn’t have you.”
All this time, she’d been trying so hard not to get too attached to him—it had never occurred to her that he might already be attached to her. “You were trying to protect yourself. And then I basically forced myself on you and tried to treat you like a cheap fling. It must have been awful.”
His smile turned into a smirk. “It wasn’t all bad.”
Their mouths met again in a series of greedy, exuberant kisses as they floated on an engulfing wave of bliss. She was intensely aware of him—his temperature, his density, the gravity of his emotions, the potential energy sparking off his skin.
“Not to cut short this romantic moment,” he murmured huskily in her ear, “but we should probably go.”
Penny’s consciousness lurched back to their present location, and the fact that it provided only the illusion of privacy. “Right. Someone might walk in.”
He brushed a kiss against her jaw. “I was thinking more that we should go let your friends know you’re all right before they storm in here and string me up by my balls.”
“They wouldn’t do that.” She paused, smiling. “Unless you deserved it.”
“I’ll have to try not to deserve it, then.”
She took his face in her hands, gazing into the amber depths of his eyes. “Are you all right?”
“As long as I have you, everything else will be okay.”
She believed him. No misgivings. No regrets.
“You have me,” she said. “For as long as you want me.”
His perfectly proportioned face broke into a double-rainbow smile. “How about forever?”
She grinned back at him, feeling lighter than air. “Forever sounds perfect.”
Epilogue
Several Months Later
“Would you rather have a cake that’s velvety and moist or one that’s light and airy?”
At the sound of her voice, Caleb looks up from the pathophysiology textbook he’s reading at the dining table. He’s back in school to get a degree in occupational therapy—a career that appeals to him far more than being an MD ever did.
