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“Shane,” she says again. “I love you, too. And I was scared, too. If I hadn’t been so scared, I maybe would have guessed in the parking lot that you were scared, and maybe I would have fought harder for us. But I just thought I’d been a fool, like I’d been with Anthony. It didn’t occur to me—” She stops.
“That I was the fool?”
She grins at me. “Well, yeah, kind of.” She touches my hair, my cheek, my shoulder. Then she’s running her hands over my arms like she’s trying to prove to herself that I’m real, like she can’t get enough. “I don’t know when I started loving you, either.”
I shrug. “It doesn’t matter that much. But you should know that I don’t plan to stop.”
“Me neither,” she says.
My eyes go to her mouth, which I’ve missed so much, and I lower mine to hers, and then we’re both so fucking gone, devouring each other. She’s whimpering and moaning and murmuring, “You know what the best way is if you want me to really believe you love me.”
“What?” I ask.
“You’re going to have to show me.”
“Huh,” says a voice behind us. “Okay. So. Misjudged that one.”
We turn to find Weggers standing behind us.
“How long have you been there?” I groan.
He tilts his bald head. “Just since Ivy said she loved you. Parked over by the lodge and walked over here. You two didn’t even hear me, you were so…” He waves a hand at the two of us. “Huh,” he says again. “Well.” He seems genuinely surprised but not, I note, displeased. “I think your grandfather would approve.”
“You know I don’t give a shit, right?” I say.
He stares at us a moment longer. “Tell me one thing,” he says. “Were you faking? In the beginning?”
We look at each other.
“No,” we say at the same time.
Weggers tilts his head and gives us one last hard look. Then he swivels on a heel and heads up to the main Hott Spring office building, aka the ranch house.
A moment later Hanna pokes her head out the front door.
“You guys!” she calls. “Quit making up and making out in my parking lot. Get the hell out of here!”
I grin at Ivy. “I guess the showing you starts right now.”
I scoop her up in my arms and carry her to my car.
43
Ivy
“I never stopped thinking about you,” Shane says. “I never stopped wanting you. I never stopped imagining this.”
We’re kissing just inside my front door, which is as far as we made it before Shane’s lips found mine. Before his tongue begged me for entrance and I let him in, the two of us groaning into each other’s mouths, our bodies fusing from chest to thigh. I staggered back against the door, and he pinned me there, lifting me so I could feel his hard heat against the neediest part of me, so I could rub myself against him, whimpering, until he cursed and blurted out those words.
“Me neither,” I tell him.
We kiss like we can’t get enough of each other, hands groping and grasping like we’re worried the other’s going to get away, but the thing is, it’s almost the opposite. It’s this deep relief. This is the first time I’m not afraid.
And it feels so good that I want to tell him. I want him to know.
I break the kiss and say, “You know what’s so good about this?”
“What?” he asks, smiling at me. Grinning at me. I’ve seen all kinds of Shane smiles, but this is something else entirely, this grin that’s like mine when I discover a new peony variety. And I know I’m doing it, too, my grin echoing right back at him.
