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He arched a brow. “Remember how I told you I’ve got this great little place down in Costa Rica? With a private beach and a view unlike any other. I bought it more than a decade ago with the idea it’s where I’d end up after I retire. The sad thing is I’ve been there three times in ten years. Let me know the second you start thinking about retirement and I’ll buy the plane tickets.”
“I don’t think people like us do well in retirement,” she said. “Sitting still and doing nothing isn’t one of my strong suits.”
“Maybe we don’t go for retirement,” he said. “Maybe we go for a honeymoon.”
The heat in his eyes was so intense she forgot she was supposed to be tending to his wounds.
“One step at a time,” she whispered, blowing out a breath. “This is going to be cold.” She grabbed one of the water bottles and a clean cloth. The wound on his arm and across his stomach had to be cleaned before she could sew him back up.
“I’ve had worse,” he shrugged. “Just get it done. Let me ask you a question.”
“Whatever you need to do to distract yourself,” she said.
“Do you want me?” He hissed out a breath as the frigid water ran over his wounds. “Like, physically? Are you attracted to me in that way?”
The vulnerability in his voice surprised her. She couldn’t imagine a man like him had ever been unsure of his attractiveness to the opposite sex.
“Not at the moment,” she said, narrowing her eyes in concentration. “Seems like bad form to take advantage of a man in your current state.”
“Very funny,” he said. “But seriously. All cards on the table. You’re it for me, Eden. I knew it the moment I saw your picture in the file. I can’t explain it. Maybe it’s supernatural. Maybe it’s fate. I don’t know, and I don’t want to think about it too hard because my head is starting to hurt. I just need to know that you feel something.”
“I feel something,” she said, cleaning the areas as thoroughly as she could. “You know I do. I feel more than I ever thought I’d feel again. Which scares the hell out of me. I want you. The physical is there. But I also like you, even though you drive me crazy sometimes. And I think I could choose to love you.”
“Choose to love me?” he asked.
“The bullet passed through,” she said. “That’s a stroke of luck. I’m not great at digging bullets out of people.”
He growled and she smiled, threading a needle so she could stitch him up. The cut along his stomach was long and red, but it would be fine with butterfly bandages and antiseptic.
“Love is not an emotion,” she said, making the first stitch. “It’s a choice. Maybe that takes the romance out of it for some people, but to me the choice makes it all the more romantic. Choosing to love someone day in and day out is the hard part. Emotions are easy. The flutters in the stomach and the euphoria of new love—getting to know someone to their very core. Sex.
“But those things fade over time. Choosing to love someone takes effort. Every single day. Choosing to stay through the different stages of life—children, sickness, death of loved ones, career changes, hormones—that’s when you really understand what love is. If I choose to love someone, I mean it. I don’t make promises lightly.”
She finished stitching him up and wrapped a bandage around his arm, and then she pulled back to see his face.
“Thanks for pushing me down,” she said. “You saved my life.”
She touched her throat and it was tender to the touch from where the man’s arm had pressed against her, cutting off her oxygen. It was swollen and getting harder for her to speak. But only time and rest would heal it.
“I knew the second the bullet was fired and hit the man holding me that there’d be another one for me,” she said. “I should have known Jonah would want a ringside seat to our deaths. Just to make sure we were out of his way and he could move on with his plan. But I’ve been his only failure. He didn’t kill me that night in France. And he wouldn’t have wanted to give anyone else the pleasure. I really thought that was the end for me. I was waiting for it.”
Eden took a long drink of cold water, hoping that would soothe the burn. Nate’s hand came up and cupped her cheek gently and she leaned against it.
“It’s never over until you give up.” He brought his lips to hers—softly—soothing. It wasn’t a kiss of high passion. This was an easing into each other—an acceptance. He pulled back and smiled. “I wasn’t ready to give up yet. Not when I’ve just chosen you.”
She nodded because that’s all she could do, and then she went about the task of patching up the wound across his stomach. It didn’t take long, but by the time she was finished, sweat had beaded on Nate’s brow and he was shivering from the cold.
“Get some clean clothes on and get warm,” she told him.
“I will if you’ll let me take care of that cut above your eyebrow. You’ll keep opening it up and bleeding if I don’t close it.”
She nodded in agreement and passed over the supplies. His hands were gentle as he put butterfly bandages across the cut.
“I’ve got a confession to make,” he said once he was finished. His fingers trailed down her jaw and glanced over the line of bruises across her neck, and she watched his face darken with anger.
“What’s that?” Her voice cracked under the strain.
He met her gaze and the heat there almost knocked her over with its intensity. “Watching you dive out of the front of that building as it exploded was one of the sexiest things I’ve seen in my entire life. If we weren’t both injured right now I wouldn’t be opposed to starting our wedding night early.”
