“I want that too.”
“Thank Christ, because after this season I’m going to be spending a lot of time in Portland and I want to spend it with you,” he said. “There’s a coaching position opening up at University of Oregon and I’ve accepted the job.”
Her eyes burned with emotion. “You did this for me?”
“I did this for us,” he said, looking into her eyes. He shook his head. “God, you drive me crazy when you look at me like that. The best kind of crazy. And I want you just the way you are.” He leaned closer. “No changing, no pretense, just that sweet and sexy woman who tried to go skinny-dipping with me that night.”
She laughed even though it came out a little like a sob. “I was trying to skinny-dip. You crashed my party.”
He pulled her close. “If you’d let me, I’d crash your party every minute of every day.”
“Even if it had to be after-hours parties for a while?”
He leaned in and whispered in her ear, “Those are my second favorite kind of parties.”
“What’s your first?” she whispered back as little flutters took flight in her chest.
“This.” He tilted her head up and delivered the kind of kiss that made Jillian’s world tilt back to right. The kind of kiss that made all her fears vanish and made her want to take a chance on herself—and on love. “Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I love you so much I almost let it cost me you.”
“Then will you, Jillian Conner, be my—”
She jerked her hands back. “Wait, I’m still not sure about—”
“—girlfriend?”
She covered her mouth. “Your?”
He grinned a big, sexy, disarming grin that had her pulse thumping. He wrapped her up tight against him. “My girlfriend. Unless you don’t want to put a label on us.”
“I love labels.” She went up on her toes and kissed him, and he kissed her back until her entire body was quivering. “As long as I get to think of you as mine.”
“Cupcake, I’ve been yours since that teeny-tiny teal bikini.”
Jillian had never been so grateful to a piece of clothing in her life because it brought her a man like Clay. And the kind of happiness that had this single girl hanging up her single-shingle. She was no longer in the dating business; she was in the girlfriend business.
