“It’s just a loft. Not much to it.”
But she found herself wondering what he thought as he stepped inside her private quarters of the enormous house. It looked far cheerier in the sunlight, but today the gray weather had followed them inside, making it dull and dreary. She turned on a lamp, chasing out the dimness with a soft, inviting glow. For autumn she’d tucked away a lot of the aqua and apricot accents and replaced them with warmer tones of dark red and gold, like the soft throw draped over the back of the sofa, assorted candles, and a few throw pillows.
“Nice place,” he said, directly behind her. Close enough that she jumped a little at his nearness and goose bumps popped out over her skin—the good kind, too. She had to stop being quite so aware.
“Thanks.”
“It’s very you, Jess. Comfortable and classy. A bit of peace in a wild sea.” He walked to the windows and looked out. “God, what a view. It’s like having the ocean at your fingertips. She’s a mean mistress today, isn’t she?”
The dingy waves were tipped with whitecaps. It would be wild outside the shelter of the cove. “My father used to say that,” Jess answered softly.
He turned around. “You still miss him, don’t you?”
She nodded. “Of course I do. Not like I did. It’s more fond memories now. It’ll be that way for you, too. It takes a while.”
“The house is so quiet without my mom. I keep expecting her to walk in the door and read me the riot act for leaving my clothes on the floor. How ridiculous is that? I haven’t lived at home since I was twenty.”
“When it’s final, there’s no turning back,” she replied. “No do-overs or fixes. It can be tough to accept.”
“Did you have regrets?” Rick held her gaze and she was caught staring into the depths, wondering how they managed to get from sniping at each other to sharing intimate details in only a matter of weeks. The truth was, she’d never hated him. Been scared for him, yes. Disapproved of how he handled things? Definitely. But never hated. They went too far back for that. And she was starting to realize that she’d been so very angry because she cared about him more than she should.
“I made lots of mistakes,” she admitted. “Josh was oldest and the only son. Sarah was the baby of the family. It seemed everyone worried about them a lot. I just kind of held back at first, happy to be off everyone’s radar. But then I missed my dad and I’d held my grief in for so long I didn’t know how to talk about it. So I looked for attention. Not all of it was good attention, either.”
Indeed not. Her marks had started slipping. She’d changed how she dressed and hung out with dif
ferent people. Her father’s death had taken what would have been normal teenage angst and amped it up a notch … or three.
The room suddenly seemed smaller, the air thinner. Where were they going with this?
“And then what happened?”
They both knew what happened.
“Mike,” he said darkly.
The wind was picking up and the rain spattered against the wide windows, sounding like little grains of sand hitting the glass.
And still Rick’s dark eyes held hers, tethering them together even though he was in front of the window and she was beside the sofa. She was tempted. So tempted.
Instead she forced herself to turn away. “It’s cold in here. I’m going to build a fire.”
She grabbed some kindling from beside the fireplace and in seconds it caught, the flames snapping and leaping behind the screen. Her heart felt like it was going to hammer its way out of her chest. Dinner my ass, she thought. She’d invited him up here but the last thing on her mind right now was dinner. Time with him was what she wanted. What she’d been wanting for weeks now. Time to explore what might be happening between them, away from the eyes of any of their friends or family. It scared her to death but it was exciting, too. He’d changed so much this fall, pulled himself together, and she’d waited a long, long time to have this feeling again.
He appeared beside her, took a log from the stack, and put it on top of the kindling. Then another. The licking flames caught the wood, curling the bark of the birch log with a snap.
His hand—his prosthetic—cupped her elbow and urged her to her feet, and when she stood up he turned her to face him.
“If you don’t want this, tell me now.”
Her tongue was tied in too many knots to reply.
His right hand slid to the base of her neck, beneath her hair. The move was slightly dominant but in a totally sexy way. Rick was a man who would take charge but never be about control.
As Jess’s breath caught in her throat, he pulled her closer, against his hard body, and stole all her thoughts as he kissed her.
CHAPTER 13
This wasn’t a gentle kiss like before. There was no hesitancy, no caution, no testing the waters. It was full-on, lips and tongue, bodies pressed together and acknowledging a mutual need.