His free hand reaches up to remove the blindfold from my eyes, and it takes several blinks before I’m consumed by the blue gaze fixed on mine. Those eyes are almost shocking in their intensity, staggering me with the sheer emotion pouring from them.
Ford leans closer to kiss my lips chastely, his words ghosting over my mouth. “Your kiss is like coming home…”
His eyes flicker between mine as his right hand joins his left at the back of my neck, making it so that I couldn’t tear my gaze from his even if I wanted to.
“I’ve missed youso. Fucking. Much.”
My heart swells to bursting as he presses a soft kiss to my lips, pulling back just enough to say, “Surprise!”
A smile spreads across his face before he angles me around to behold my surroundings.
My jaw drops open as tears prick my eyes at the beauty laid out before me.
Several weeping willows line the sides of a small lake, with Christmas lights strung between the boughs. Ford’s beloved acoustic guitar is propped against one tree, and by the water, a blanket of pillows is strewn with coral peony petals, their scent filling the air.
The twinkling lights flicker and dance on the serene water, and a bright smile blooms on my face when I spot a sheet pinned between two tree trunks.
“No better send-off than a movie night with my aspiring actress girlfriend, right?”
I lay my head against the bulge of his muscular bicep and sigh in sheer contentment. “If we have to be apart for the foreseeable future, I can’t think of any other way I’d prefer to spend your last night, Cowboy.”
Ford’s chest rumbles with a deep chuckle, and I can feel him fidget in his jeans pocket before the sound of “Iris,” one of my all-time favorite songs, fills the night surrounding us.
“But first…” he trails off as he extends a gentlemanly hand. His eyes pierce straight through me, searing this moment onto my soul as I accept it with an almost shy smile. “Dance with me.”
I step into his warm embrace, breathing him deeply into my lungs, getting drunk off the simple proximity of this man who’s become so much more than my obsession.
His eyes stay trained on mine for a beat until he drops his brow to mine, and my heart stills behind my breastbone as he huskily murmurs the lyrics.
The whole world melts away into nothing until it’s just him and I, safe within an impenetrable cocoon of our own making. As the final bars of the song crescendo, Ford leans closer to brush his lips over mine, whispering the last lines until the music fades.
And then he repeats them as he rises to his full height. “I just want you to know who I am…”
Resting my chin on his expansive chest, I grin impishly, utterly in awe of howperfectthis moment is. “And who is it that you are, Mr Holloway?”
Without missing a beat, he reaches up to palm my cheeks, and my breath hitches as his eyes grow stormy.
“I am the lucky sonuvabitch who’s wholly?—”
Kiss.
“Completely.”
Kiss.
“Hopelessly head over fuckin’ heels in love with you, Tink.”
It takes a beat for those words to sink in. Words I’ve longed to hear from his lips, and I gasp as my own love for this man whooshes through my veins.
“I love you, too?—”
My words are cut off as Ford slams his mouth to mine, and?—
“Are you ready to leave, Miss Hart?”
My eyes blow wide like saucers when they fly up to find Ford looking down at me.
As I make an exaggerated fuss of scrolling through my emails on my cell, I will my heartbeat to recede to a regular beat rather than the gallop it insists on in the aftermath of that accidental trip down memory lane.
