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Tension threads his body. I look up warily into his shuttered expression.
“What?” I ask. “You already know that.”
He pushes his hand into my hair, smoothing it away from my face. “Baby, that’s the biggest, most incredible gift you could give me. I can’t believe how lucky I am to have you…to have you love me. It doesn’t make any sense, but I’ll be damned if I won’t do everything in my power to prove worthy of you.”
“You already are.” I curl my fingers against his chest. “Why do you keep implying that you’re not?”
“I meant it when I said I don’t have anything to give you.” Regret tightens his mouth. “This house is it. I saved a lot of money in my early career, but Nicole and her husband had lousy medical insurance. She also lost her job a few months before her diagnosis, so that made things even worse. I helped them out with bills as much as I could.”
I close my eyes. He doesn’t have to tell me—wouldn’twantto tell me—that the cost of his sister’s medical bills and treatment wiped them both out.
“What were your plans before that?” I ask quietly.
What dreams did you lose?
For a long moment, he doesn’t respond. He skims his hand gently up and down my arm.
“I wanted to get my life together,” he finally says. “Get my high school equivalency degree. Do something that would make both my dad and my sister proud. Bounty hunting was okay, but I didn’t want to do it for years on end.”
“What did you want to do?”
No response. I rest my chin on my arm as I gaze at him.
“Cook?” I ask.
His chest rumbles with a self-deprecating laugh. “Maybe. I don’t know. Once my dad took Nicole and me to San Diego for a long weekend. He never had the time or money for vacations, so it was a big deal. We stayed in a house right on the beach. There was a little diner close by that had the best food. We ate there every night.”
He pauses and strokes his hand along my side. “When I started making good money from bounty hunting, I had a half-baked idea of saving enough to open a place like that on a beach somewhere. A little seafood shack, maybe one built on stilts right over a cliff. Big windows looking out onto the ocean. A jukebox playing classic rock and ballads. Maybe a bar. I’d serve basic, good food—fried shrimp, burgers, fish and chips. All fresh seafood, right from the docks. But—”
His voice breaks off.
But he used all of his savings to help his sister.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says as if reading my thoughts. “I don’t have the book smarts to open a place like that anyway.”
“Dane, you don’t need a college degree…or, heck, even a high school diploma to open a restaurant.”
“No, but you need capital and investors.” He shrugs. “I don’t have either one, even for a seafood shack.”
I want to protest that he can still find a way to do it, to make his dream come true, but the words die in my throat. I’ve lost track of how many times I told myself the same thing when I considered turning my soap-making into a business.
I don’t know where to start. I don’t have the money. I don’t have the know-how. I’ll fail.
How can I encourage Dane when all I’ve ever done is talk myself out of even giving it a try?
I sit up. His gaze snaps to my naked breasts. My breath catches, but I grab his discarded shirt and pull it on so neither one of us gets distracted.
“Dane.” I lean closer to look him in the eye. “Remember when you gave me that big lecture about fighting for my dreams and making them real? I want you to do the same thing.”
He huffs out a laugh. “Baby, you’re young. You have years ahead of you to do whatever you want. I’m almost thirty-four. Way too old to go back to school or start a venture I know nothing about.”
“Stop it.” I poke his chest with my forefinger. “Thirty-four is far fromold. There’s no deadline for starting something new. No rules. You can learn how to play the trombone when you’re eighty. You can become a balloon artist when you’re fifty-four. You can swim with the dolphins when you’re sixty-five. You are the only person who can decide what you do and when you do it.”
He tugs at my shirt. “Gimme a kiss, my brilliant, beautiful girl.”
I put my hand out to stop him from pulling me closer—for now. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are.”
