Four Nights to Forever (19 page)
“No skiing today, I guess,” he said. The bitterness was hard to keep out of his tone. He knew it wasn’t fair, though. The mess their relationship had become was no more her fault than it was his. A simple vacation affair gone so right it was bound to go wrong.
“No, I . . .” The tentative smile on her face wavered, then recovered. “You’d mentioned that the spa was looking for a yoga instructor.”
He snapped to attention.
“I wanted to see what they were looking for. And if I am qualified. I’ve rented a car for this afternoon, and I’ve got a list of yoga studios to visit to check out the market firsthand. See if maybe—”
His intention to wait for her to finish talking never made it past the planning stage. “You’re considering moving here?”
Sun on freshly fallen snow couldn’t compete with the brightness of her smile. “I’m considering it.” She held out her hand to stop another interruption. “But I can’t just move here on hopes and dreams. I’m not that person, and I’ve never been that person. Loving someone after only a week seems impossible to me, and I want to make sure there’s more here for me than just you if something happens.”
His heart was racing, his whole body aching to be pressed against hers. “What can I do to help?” he said, trying to stay as calm as he could. Cassie was a woman who moved at her own pace and he loved her for it. Rushing her would be self-defeating.
She shrugged. “Well, I can cancel my car rental. Maybe you can drive me around.”
“I’d be happy to.” Joy gushed up his throat, and his voice pitched high like he was a teenager again.
“No pressure.” Her voice was low, as though she was trying to added gravity to this conversation, but he didn’t care. He never in his life thought he’d be so excited to drive around the city and tour yoga studios.
“No pressure,” he repeated. His heart felt as big as the mountain peaks, and he reached forward to wrap his arms around her and swing her around. But she stepped back.
“And we’ll talk about your kids. And what you see my relationship with your kids being. And before I move here, I visit for a weekend and meet your kids.”
He stepped toward her again. “Of course we’ll talk about my kids.”
“And we’ll talk about whether or not you want more kids, because I
can’t
have kids, Doug.”
Her news broke his stride but didn’t stop his forward momentum. “We can absolutely talk about that, but I can tell you that I only ever wanted two kids. And I have two kids.”
Her step back was shorter this time and didn’t take her out of his range. “If I’m going to do something as insane as move across the country to be with a man I’ve only known for a week, I’m going to do it as sanely as possible.”
His next step closed the difference. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“This is crazy, you know.”
He ran a gloved hand across the fine skin of her chin. “I’m crazy about you.”
“I’m relying on the illogical thought that as long as we’re crazy together, we can make it work.”
Happiness radiated from her face as he wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close to him. He wanted to cheer. He wanted to run up to the top of the mountain and shout to the world how lucky he was. Instead, he leaned back and spun her around, his heavy ski boots clomping on the brick of the plaza. Her feet narrowly missed knocking over a group of snowboarders, but it didn’t matter.
It may have been her birthday yesterday, but he was the one getting the best gift of his life.
Jennifer Lohmann is a Rocky Mountain girl at heart, having grown up in southern Idaho and Salt Lake City. When she’s not writing or working as a public librarian, she wrangles two cats and a flock of backyard chickens. (The dog is better behaved.) She currently lives in Durham, North Carolina.
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