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“You can’t fire me,” she managed to say. “I already quit.”
“Okay.” A little smile was playing on his lips now, as if he could read the tender emotion in her face and realized she felt the same way he did. “Then I accept your resignation.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?” His hands got a little tighter as he searched her face one more time.
“Yeah. Okay.”
With a groan, he pulled her into his arms, into a hug so hard she couldn’t breathe for a moment. She hugged him back, though, feeling like things were exactly right between them for the first time…maybe ever.
The embrace went on for a long time—just them holding each other with matching need. Then finally Jake pulled away and asked, “Do you think we could sit down now? I feel like I might pass out after the morning I’ve had.”
Anne went to sit on the couch, and he followed her, collapsing beside her with a low groan.
“What do you mean, after the morning you’ve had?” she asked, genuinely curious.
“What do you think I mean? I came to find you this morning, and you were gone. You’d run out on me without a word. So I had to jump in the car and come after you. Damn, those might have been the worst hours of my life, thinking what I’d finally found was just going to slip through my fingers.”
It took her several moments to process his words, but when she did, she leaned back in a slump. “Oh.”
He slanted her a look. “Why did you run out on me this morning, Anne?”
“I thought…” She was suddenly afraid to admit it, since she’d clearly jumped to conclusions that were completely wrong, and it was a little embarrassing. “I thought you’d left me.”
“What? What did you think happened last night?”
He looked so surprised that she blushed hotly. “Last night was…amazing. But I woke up and you were gone. Then I saw your notes on the new position for me, and I thought it was a sign that you’d never think I was as important as your work, and I knew I couldn’t take anything less than…having you for real. So I just…ran.”
He reached over and pulled her against his chest. “You little idiot,” he said, tenderness obvious in his voice. “I had just gone down to get us some breakfast.”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment and realized how completely wrong she’d been. She hid her face in his shirt. “Oh God.”
He was laughing as he wrapped both of his arms around her again.
“Don’t laugh at me,” she told him, without any real heat. She pulled away enough to look up at his face. “I had good reason to think you’d pulled back and prioritized your work again, since you’d been doing it for years.”
“I know,” he said in a different tone, gently stroking her hair. “I’ve been more of an idiot than you could ever be. I’m sorry it took me so long. Work was always safer—the one thing I felt like I could control. When you told me you were quitting, I was almost out of my mind. I kept thinking you wouldn’t be my employee anymore, so there would be nothing holding me back. But I was so used to putting my feelings on hold, I didn’t think I could let myself act on them. I didn’t think I could ever have you. Have you and keep you, I mean.”
She understood exactly what he meant. She knew him as well as she knew herself. “I didn’t think I could ever have you either,” she admitted.
“So we were both wrong.” He leaned down to gently kiss her lips. “I always knew I needed you in my life, but for a long time I pretended that having you at work was enough. But it’s not. And, just so you know, now that I have you like this, there’s no way in hell I’m ever going to let you go.”
She beamed up at him. “Sounds just about right to me.”
They kissed for a minute—emotional and a little clumsy—until a voice startled them from the other side of the apartment.
Meg called out, “I’m coming out. I’m sorry, but I need to go to work.”
“That’s fine,” Anne replied, straightening up a little although Jake wouldn’t let her out of the circle of his arms.
