“I’m in love with you.”
Saskia’s mouth fell open. It had been Nate who’d spoken. Nate who now had his hands on her upper arms as if he’d sensed her knees had given way.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Not so much.”
Looking around, he found a park bench tucked into a private copse of rough-leaved trees on the edge of the beach, and paid the skateboarders perched thereupon a bunch of notes to rack off.
“You love me?” Saskia said as she sank to the bench, the words thick and unfamiliar on her tongue.
“Yeah,” said Nate as he perched on the edge of the seat beside her, “I do.”
A glance her way, then he ran a hand up the back of his head. But not in a frustrated way—more in a chagrined way. As if he knew he should have said so a hell of a lot sooner. Then his hand fell to hers, wrapping it tight.
“Saskia, I was living in a tunnel, with no light at the end. Then you came along, and suddenly I noticed when I could smell fresh air, when I felt sunshine. I began to notice the stars and the ground at my feet. You, Saskia Bloom, are my earth.”
So much emotion swelled inside her there were no words. Just feelings. So many wonderful, tumbling impossibly beautiful feelings. And the knowledge that she held Nate’s heart in the palm of her hand. She knew then that she’d take better care of it than she had of anything else her whole life.
“Before I met you,” Saskia said, turning to bump knees, to slide a hand onto his smooth cheek, to look deep into his spellbinding eyes, “I was like a mouse spinning on a wheel—fully expecting to reach my desired destination so long as I kept going in the same direction. And then along came you. You showed me another way.” She ran a hand through his hair, smiling when the wind took over, ruffling it just a tad. “I’m not sure what I was ever so afraid of.”
“Me either.”
“This, perhaps?” she asked, sliding her arms around his waist.
“Not so scary.”
“How about this?” she said, sliding her hand over his shoulder as she straddled him. Light played through the trees above, shadows dappling eyes not able to hold back the gleam.
His hands went straight to her backside, held on. “Nope. Not that. How about this for scary: I choose you, Saskia Bloom. If you’ll have me.”
Scary? Try the very meaning of perfection!
“I’ll have you, Nate Mackenzie. And have you and have you and have you.”
She dipped her head to kiss him. Shock and awe subsided as he kissed her back tenderly, surely, ravishingly. Her very own big, beautiful, sweet, kind, bold master of the universe.
The hum of music rolled over the sandbank and skimmed the edges of Saskia’s love-drenched mind. A grunge version of “Wishing and Hoping.”
It was Nate who pulled away and said, “Is that...?”
Her ears pricked up. “The band from The Cave!”
“Mae is a crazy woman.”
“I like her.”
“Yeah,” Nate drawled. “I can’t quite believe it, but I do too. Meaning we’d better go do this thing.”
Nate lifted her off his lap, placed her gently on the sandy grass and helped her back into her shoes. Then, standing, he put the silver bag in one of Saskia’s hands and wrapped his arm about her waist, snuggled her in against his side.
When they hit the beach Saskia marvelled at the crisp, perfect blue of the sky, at the sweet fluffy white of the clouds, at the way the sand sparkled like glitter, and asked the one question she’d wanted an answer to that she hadn’t put in her dossier.
“Why did you choose me?” Saskia asked. “From the site, I mean.”
“The urge to know what retro grunge meant.” He waved a hand at the band rocking barefoot by the waves. “That and the fact you had the sexiest eyes I’d ever seen, the sweetest mouth, the most incongruous hat...”
He leaned down to brush a kiss against her mouth and soon Saskia thought breathing was overrated.
They pulled up at the back of the group, and Nate waited until Mae had skipped down the makeshift aisle before asking, “So why did you choose me?”
Saskia almost laughed out loud before she realised he was serious. Sweet man. “Oh. Well, I near didn’t. Don’t get me wrong—you were adorable. Got me all tingly with one photo. But you looked so uptight.” She looked at him now, pink-cheeked from the wind, hair ruffled, tie askew from her ministrations. Yeah, she thought, he so needed me. “The only thing that made me think we might have anything in common was that Catch-22 is your favourite book.”
Nate looked at her blankly.
“You said so. In your profile.”