Chapter 11
“We didn’t catch many fish last night.” Danica unloaded her tennis racquet from behind the seat of my truck. “But I like what we caught instead.” The tone of her voice hinted at our kissing session.
She’d found a pair of racquets in her hall closet at home and had asked to try them out and see whether she was actually a tennis player. Muscle memory would tell her. I was game for that. And for Danica in a tennis skirt.
We headed for the court, and she skipped beside me as I walked. She grabbed my hand and swung it, and then she jumped onto the bench seat just inside the court. Standing on it, she gave me a good, solid kiss. “It’s driving me crazy not to be cleared to return to work yet. What were you doing all morning that you couldn’t come rescue me from my boredom?”
“You were bored?”
“Dreadfully.” She talked about going to the gym and staring at the kids’ faces to try to remember their names—with no luck.
“You needed more Jane Eyre.”
“I needed more Jeremy Hotston.” She wrapped her legs around my waist, and before I knew it, I was spinning her around. She whipped out her phone and took a selfie of us in that ridiculous but mind-blowingly good embrace. Then she sent it to me. “So you can remember this moment. The first time we kissed in a tennis court.”
We played a couple of sets. She was a lot better at it than I was, and eventually she took pity on me. “If you don’t play tennis, what do you do?”
“In my profession, golf is more the standard.”
“Oh, I think … I think I still love golf. Can we try it?”
The next afternoon, we golfed. The full front nine, she beat me. Sorely. “Are you okay with that?”
“I love a challenge.”
She sidled up to me on the golf cart, her leg pressing against mine and her arm around my waist. “And am I a challenge?”
Gracious, she had no idea. “If I say you are, will you extrapolate if A then B, if B then A?”
“I might.” She proceeded to challenge me at golf on the back nine. And by flirting with me outrageously. By saying whoever scored lower on the hole got to choose the length of that hole’s kiss in the golf cart.
Our golf cart saw more kissing action than it had probably seen in years. If ever. Danica set the kiss timer longer each time she won. And that was every time.
Not that I was losing anything here. Believe me. Nobody won more by losing at golf that day than I did, even someone who’d been bribed to throw the Master’s Tournament. It was becoming clearer to me minute by minute that I was going to have to either propose to this woman and make her mine forever or—
Or tell her the truth about our past and watch her stomp out of my life. Again.
I opted for a step toward the former.
The sun sank toward the horizon. “It’s probably time to return the golf cart,” I said between rounds of kissing her behind the clubhouse, in the shade of the evergreens. “Unless you want me to just buy it.”
“Yes.” She went back to kissing me. “I’ll want one for each day of the week.”
I succumbed to this faulty reasoning.
A few passion-filled minutes later, I rallied my willpower again. “If we go now, I can make you dinner.”
“I don’t need food. I don’t need air.” She kissed me again, and then she started to crawl onto my lap. Like, as if this was going somewhere else.
Much as it felt like the right plan, I knew it wasn’t. Not yet. I twisted to block her move, but I met her gaze and said soberly, “Danica. I’ve been crazy about you for as long as I can remember.” The admission felt like all the water of Niagara Falls flowing off me in one giant splash. “You’re all I’ve thought of.”
Her blue eyes filled up, glossy and yet happy. “As weak as this is going to sound, it’s the same for me about you, Jeremy. For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted you. The second you showed up in my hospital room, I thought I was the luckiest woman alive if a gorgeous man like you would appear with four bouquets for me, and then, when you read me my favorite book, I was a goner. Hook, line, and sinker. Or at least I thought that was as gone as I could be over you—then you kissed me. Speaking of hooks, lines, and sinkers.”
She kissed me again, and I let all this information swirl through me. For once I didn’t want to scale back my reaction to her, for once I wanted to break loose and tell her all I was feeling. But she interrupted my confession with another round of kisses, and then a soul-melting speech.
“Your kiss is my life’s breath. I can’t—I can’t anything without it. Without you. I know this is gushing. I know it’s over the top, but all these weeks I’ve been waiting for some declaration from you, and I guess my dam just broke. It’s like I have to tell you everything I’m feeling. How much I’m wanting you. Wanting us. Wanting this. Whatever happened before, I’m just—let’s forget it. I know I already have. Over and over, you’ve argued for the merits of fresh starts. Well, I’m all for them. Not just because I have no choice in the matter. I’m in love with you, Jeremy. You make me feel like nothing else matters but you and me and the two of us and who we are and what we can build together in this life.” And this time, she did crawl into my lap, and I let her nestle there, with my arms around her, secure and safe, and almost permanent.
The sun had set, and the last employee came around the back of the clubhouse. His name tag read Rufus.