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“How’s that?”
“Your sister rang just before I came.”
“Oh. What did Faith say?” His hand came down on hers, their fingers entwining, and his thumb ran over her wrist, sending waves of heat and hope all through her.
Saskia breathed out, even laughed a tad. “She told me about your family meeting. I’m so proud of you, Nate. Now, hold onto them with everything you have. Know how lucky you are to have them at all.”
“I will. I do.”
And since he’d given her an opening she saw no reason not to take it. “She also said you were pining.”
Nate laughed. “Terror.”
“She’s softer than you think, you know. She’s...” Hang on a second. “How did you know it was Faith?”
“I’m sorry?”
“It could have been Hope who’d called. Or Jasmine.”
“Hmm?”
Saskia tugged at his arm, pulling them both up short. She held a hand to her eyes to shield them from the sun. Noticing, Nate moved to shield her all on his own.
And then it hit her. “You asked Faith to call. To casually let slip you were coming alone.”
He looked over her shoulder a moment, before his eyes slanted back to hers. “I figured what’s the good of having bumptious sisters who won’t butt out of my affairs unless I use them for my own nefarious purposes?”
The sun created a halo around his golden head, leaving his eyes dark smudges in his perfectly carved face. But there was no mistaking the glint, the gleam, the need, want, desire, all shifting below the surface.
“Considering how we left things, I wasn’t sure you’d have listened to me.”
“I’d have listened, and I’d have come.” Saskia grabbed a hold of his lapels and gave the big guy a shake. “And not because of any contract. Just because you asked.”
While she still held his jacket so tight, not wanting to let him go ever, Nate lifted a hand. It was millimetres from her cheek, a whisper from her skin, when Mae came barrelling up.
“My God, you two look gorgeous. Don’t they look gorgeous?” she said to no one in particular. “I just want to stick you on top of my cake and eat you with a spoon. Later, though. It’s all about to begin. If you want to join the crowd over there somewhere I’m about to marry the man of my dreams!”
With that she skipped away, her red hair a riot against the blue sky.
Saskia looked back at Nate to find him watching her, his gaze intent, as if his eyes had never left her. “This isn’t a dream,” he said. “You’re really here.”
Happiness tugged at her belly and her heart felt too big for her chest. “I’m really here.”
“And you do look gorgeous. Beyond gorgeous. In fact—” He lifted his trouser leg to reveal two pairs of socks. “In preparation for having one pair knocked off.”
Saskia laughed, the sound floating away on the sea air. “You were confident I’d come!”
“Hopeful,” he said, his hand finally landing on her cheek with such care and affection she leant into his touch, into him.
“To hell with it,” he growled, enfolding her hand in his and leading her up the beach and up a grassy sandbank behind a bright blue beach hut with a red roof. He turned her to face him and said, “I drove for an hour to go to a shop to buy stuff to make me smell like the milk of a goat. Washed myself in the stuff for days. Because I missed your scent. I missed you. When what I really should have done is this.”
And then he kissed her. Hauling her in tight and drinking her in like a drowning man. Only she was the one drowning. In lush waves of pleasure that swirled behind her eyelids like a kaleidoscope of colour and pulsed through her veins all the way to her toes.
When the kiss softened, slowed, till its sweetness nearly broke her apart, Saskia dropped her head to lean her forehead against the solid wall of his chest, the not so steady beat of his heart mirroring the not so steady beat of her own.
“I’m sorry about the other day,” she said. “I was in a messy head space—lots of thoughts clashing. And it’s not your fault I fell in love with you. You were very clear about what you wanted. I was the one who stepped outside the rules of the game.”
“You what?” His hands went to her cheeks, lifting her face to look into his.
“Stepped outside—”
“The other bit.”
She swallowed, thought one last time about feigning amnesia then squared her shoulders and looked him right in the eye. She saw so much possibility and potential in him, in her life with him, and it was too amazing to resist.
