“Maybe I am.” She remembered thinking he was trouble. When he walked into that bed-and-breakfast. The kind of trouble that missed her. But here she was, right in the middle of all that trouble. Bathing in it.
So she grabbed hold of his broad shoulders and used all her weight to pull him forward, and the two of them fell, right into the shallow surf, the soft sand giving way around them.
She screamed, because it was freezing.
And she found herself being picked up, held in his strong arms, but then unceremoniously laid back down into the water and dunked.
He laughed, and she looked up at him, breathless, giddy. Because Wolf was playing with her. And she was playing with him, like they were kids. Like they’d never been abandoned. Like they weren’t going to be separated from each other in a couple of days.
She chose not to think about it. She chose not to think about anything but how wonderful it felt to be cradled in his strong arms. Against the heat of his body, even while the water was frigid around them.
He lifted her up, held her against his body, and she started to shake. And ridiculously, wanted to cry when even a moment ago she’d been laughing.
“It’s too cold,” he said, scolding.
“Yeah, but it’s the ocean. It’s always cold.”
“Your pretty little ass is going to get hypothermia,” he said.
“I will not. Because we’re going to go straight home and get in bed, right?”
“Don’t you have guests?”
“There’s no one in the house today. They checked out this morning. And no one’s checking in tonight.”
“Well,” he said, his voice a growl.
They went home then, stripping as they went through the door, locking it behind them. They got into a hot shower, and made love with an intensity that nearly left her destroyed. Then they ate dinner together, on the floor of the living room, both of them in robes. Then they made love again by the fire. By the end of the evening, there wasn’t a room in the house they hadn’t christened.
And she knew that forever, always, she would walk in here and it would be him. His words from a few days ago came back to haunt her.
It’s a stupid idea to be with someone when you want someone else.
A life of promiscuity was always going to be out of her reach in that case. Because she was never going to want anyone else. Nobody but him. Nobody but Wolf Garrett. And then what? Because he didn’t want anything to do with permanent. He didn’t want anything to do with... With her. Not after the end of this two weeks.
She pushed that thought aside, gritty as they climbed into bed together. And she slept.
And over the next three days, she barely saw him. They were together at night, but that was it. No more visits to the bakery; no more rides on his horse.
He was separating from her. Except for those desperate couplings all through the night. When they were somewhere between asleep and awake; somewhere between sane and crazy.
And on the last day he got up, that bag he’d had on when he arrived slung over his shoulder.
“I’m going to go out and work, and then I’ll be leaving straight from there.”
“You don’t have to go,” she said, her throat thick.
She had sworn she wouldn’t do this. And the look in his eyes accused her of that very thing. Of going back on her word. Because she’d said she understood, but now that he was leaving she felt like she didn’t understand at all. She felt like she didn’t understand anything. Like the world was suddenly upside down.
Like everything was wrong.
Including her.
Because Wolf had made her into somebody different. It wasn’t about becoming a woman; it was just that every time he touched her...
She found some new dimension of herself. And now he was just leaving. And she didn’t know who this new Violet was apart from him.
And she was suddenly terrified, because she wasn’t even sure that she wanted to know.