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She’d cooked up a storm and everything she’d made had been delicious.
Delicious, like her.
“Umm.”
A soft sigh. A soft turn of her head against his shoulder.
His belly knotted.
He wanted to kiss her. Caress her. But that would wake her and he didn’t want to do that.
The hell he didn’t.
If he woke her with a touch. A whisper of his lips. If he did that, her eyes would open, she’d give him that billion-dollar smile, half temptress, half innocent, and she’d raise her arms to him, surrender to him, to herself, to whatever had happened between them during the long night…
A roar broke the early-morning silence.
Nick winced, not from the pain but from the unwelcome noise, because he knew what it was, the intrusion of a reality he had deliberately driven out of his thoughts.
The plane.
Hank and the plane, come to take Lissa away.
He eased his arm out from under her and rolled onto his back.
All good things came to an end. If the accident hadn’t proved the truth of that ugly old saying, nothing would.
Time to start the day.
Get dressed. Fire up the truck and drive Lissa to the airstrip—he’d left orders for it to be plowed and he knew it would have been done by now.
Still, he lay motionless while the minutes ticked away. Foolish, of course. There was no point in putting off the inevitable.
He sat up. Swung his good leg off the bed, used both hands to get the other aligned with it.
He shut his eyes, blinked them open.
She was awake. His senses told him so. Still, when she spoke his name in a soft voice, it put a knot in his gut.
“Nick?”
“Yes?”
He felt the mattress give a delicate shift and knew it meant she was sitting up.
“Was that—was it the plane?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
Silence. Then she cleared her throat.
“Right on time,” she said brightly.
“Yes.” Jesus, was that his entire vocabulary?
“Well,” she said, even more brightly. “I’ll only be five minutes. A quick shower and, uh, and I’ll come right down.”
He came within a heartbeat of saying “yes” again, stopped himself just in time. It didn’t matter. He got the message. It was time she left, time life returned to normal, and she wanted him out of here before she rose from the bed.
