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She’d let him.
Craziness.
How could she have pushed him away when for the first time in four years she’d felt physical excitement? When for the first time in four years her heart had sped up at a man’s touch? When her whole body had zinged with awareness? When her thighs had squeezed with excitement?
She’d wanted to kiss him back. To really kiss him back. To drag him somewhere where they were less likely to get interrupted and kiss him until they’d both been breathless.
She wanted him now, in this tiny shower stall with her, and for the bubbles and warm water to be their only covering.
She leaned her head against the wall, letting the water rinse the suds from her hair and body.
Just remembering his kiss, letting her mind go beyond that kiss to previous kisses from four years ago, had her ribcage contracting around her lungs, making her breathing labored.
She finished showering, dried off the best she could in the tiny space, slipped on fresh clothes, then headed out of the truck and over to the sink area.
She got her teeth brushed, then headed back toward the path that would take her to Medical.
“Am I seriously lucky enough to bump into you here?”
She turned slowly, her gaze colliding with Trace’s. “Guess that depends on what you call lucky.”
“Any time I have the privilege of setting eyes on you.”
Feeling vulnerable to the emotions fizzing through her, she frowned at him in hopes of at least having a moment to catch her breath. She’d thought she’d have longer before facing him again. “I don’t recall you using cheesy lines four years ago.”
Her frown didn’t deter him in the slightest and his grin was potent.
“Telling the truth is not a cheesy line.”
“Still, I don’t recall you saying such things.”
That seemed to break through whatever was making him smile so intently. “If I failed to tell you how lucky I felt four years ago then I did you a grave injustice. I felt very privileged that you noticed me.”
“You were hard not to notice,” she admitted.
“Because I kept finding reasons to bump into you? To ask you a question? To hand you something so I could touch you? I couldn’t believe my luck in meeting you that weekend.”
“I wasn’t complaining.” She hadn’t. She’d been just as attracted to him and she hadn’t tried to hide it. Not then. She might as well not bother now because she was failing miserably. The hot look in his eyes warned of that.
“Do you remember that first kiss, Chrissie?” His voice had lowered even though there was no one else on the path.
“Remind me,” she said to be contrary, because she knew every ounce of attraction she felt for this man was shining from her eyes like a homing beacon.
“Everyone had gone to dinner. It was just you and me in the medical tent.”
“We’d stayed to clean up from a suture one of the docs had done on a woman who had sliced her arm while opening a can in the kitchen,” she added.
“But the moment we were truly alone for the first time, we came together like two magnets.”
“We kissed,” she corrected. They hadn’t “come together like magnets” until much later that night. Which had quite blown her away. She’d never done anything like that before. Never.
“We’re alone right now,” he pointed out. “I could remind you with more than words.”
“Someone could come along.”
“I’m not sure I like this older, more practical version of you,” he teased.
She was older, more practical. She had to be. Did that make her boring? She bit the inside of her lip. “I’m not the same woman I was four years ago.”
