Stroke of Love (30 page)

“So, I’m really doing this. Do you think I’m making a huge mistake?” Kate asked.

“With Sage?” Luce wore her hair pulled tightly back in a clip, but the humidity had taken hold of the strands around her face, leaving them frizzy and wayward.

“No. My heart tells me we’re right together.”

“Totally. I told you when we first arrived that he was Mr. Chill, but what I didn’t tell you was that he was also a guy who took action on things that mattered. Once I saw your reaction to him, I didn’t want you to feel like I was trying to sell you on him.” She flipped her hair over her shoulder. “You know, let things progress naturally and all that crap. But he’s known for not being a press seeker and for volunteering at soup kitchens and things like that. I know his PR rep, and he never lets her publicize any of the good deeds he does. You gotta know that if I thought he wasn’t your type of guy, I’d have told you right away.” Luce wrapped her arm in Kate’s. “So tell me, a mistake with what? What’s bugging you?”

“Thanks for not telling me all that before. I’d have probably gone all googly-eyed over him.”

“
Probably
gone all?
” Luce teased.

“Shut up.” She knew she’d gone googly-eyed over him when they’d met, but she thought she’d covered it well at first. “Anyway, I don’t know. He’s ready to start a whole company based on what I do. Am I crazy to consider taking part in it? I know nothing about running a company, and the more I think about it all, the more scared I get. I mean, at least with AIA I know where I’m heading. My trips are planned, my work is defined, and there are no unanswered risks. Well, except health-wise, you know.” She sighed.

“And with Sage you have nothing concrete.”

“Right. But with AIA, I don’t have Sage.”

“That’s not true. He told you last night that you could basically do whatever you wanted. Work for AIA or another place, and he’d travel to see you as often as he could. Don’t make this into an exclusive decision, Kate. The question isn’t do you work with Sage and have a relationship with him or do you not. The question is—assuming you want a relationship with Sage, which you just said you did—where will you be happiest working? Sage sounds like a given no matter what you decide. At least as long as you want him to be.”

She sighed. “The one thing I’m certain about is that I want Sage. My entire heart and soul is full of him. And I’d be happiest working with him, doing what he’s going to try to do. It’s perfect. By the way, he came over last night. He didn’t zone out and forget.”
Just tell me to stop worrying and to run off into the sunset with him. I wish he wasn’t leaving. I wish I didn’t have to feel prepared all the time. I wish…I wish I could be with him right this second.

“Of course he did.” Luce stopped by the path to Undiscovered.

“I still have no idea how he was able to pull himself out of that weird zone he falls into, but I’m glad he did. He tries so hard to do the right thing.”

“The question is, how hurt will you be the fifteen times he forgets?”

“You’re a buzzkill when you want to be. I thought you were pro-Sage.” Kate eyed the road to the school. “Do you mind if we go see the mural?”

Luce linked her arm in Kate’s. “Where you go, I go. I’m very pro-Sage, by the way. Especially after hearing him pour his heart out last night. I just know you. You’re a planner, and he’s a follow-his-gut guy. Not that that’s a bad thing. At least you know he’ll never come up with some convoluted plan to manipulate you. The guy wears his emotions on his sleeve.”

Kate remembered his bulging veins and the look of anger in his eyes when he’d held Clayton against the tree, and how shocked she’d been when she’d first seen that side of him. Then, after hearing that he’d acted to protect her, she’d experienced a whole different type of shock. She was flattered, and intrigued, and floored to know that his feelings for her were growing as quickly as hers were for him.

The mural came into focus, and Kate stopped cold. “Look at that. Amazing, right?” Seeing the finished mural again brought as much sadness as it did excitement. It was just another sign that he would soon be leaving.

“The man’s a master at his craft.”

He’s a master at everything he does
.

“You think you’ll be okay when he forgets to show up for dinner? Really?”

“I think if he were purposely avoiding me, I’d be mad,” Kate admitted. “But he said I can’t accept excuses and that I have to hold him accountable if he forgets me. I think that’s admirable. I mean, how many guys would say that? He’s good, Luce. He’s right for me. I feel it in my bones. But we do need to figure out the details. Where will I live? What will I actually do? When can we see each other if I’m living with my parents? He tried to talk to me last night about it all, but I sort of seduced him instead.”

“Seduced him? You go, girl.” Luce followed Kate across the lawn to the school. They stood in the shade of a large tree, admiring the mural. “Sometimes I think it would be hard to be you, but right now, seeing that fulfilled look of love in your eyes, knowing you’ve been living with a glorious beach a few minutes from your perfect, secluded, elevated hut, I wish I were you.”

Kate drew in a deep breath. “Why’d you say it would be hard to be me?”

“Because while I have to be a planner for my work because my clients are used to being babysat, if I had a guy like Sage swoop me off my feet and offer me my dream job and all the love I could ever dream of, I wouldn’t care if I never planned another damn thing in my life. It must be hard to live in your head and to need every aspect of your life planned out.” Luce turned back toward the road. “Come on. I’m broiling.”

On the way back toward the main road, Kate thought of how quickly she’d fallen for Sage and how standoffish she’d tried to be when she’d seen him on the bus on the way there. How every time she looked at him her pulse raced, and how when she was with him, knowing every detail of where she was headed took a backseat.

“Am I worrying too much?”

Luce shrugged. “How the hell should I know? I could never live like you do. I would go nuts moving every few years. I like traveling, but I also like having a home base, you know? Someplace that when I return, I think,
Thank God I’m home
.”

“He’s not asking me to marry him and settle down. He asked me to see how the relationship goes and to work with him. What if working together is a mistake? I keep wondering about that.” She played with romantic images in her mind of reading and hanging out in the studio with Sage as he worked and traveling to villages where they could actually help the residents, but in the next breath she worried about working that closely together. She’d watched her parents work and travel together her whole life, and while they seemed happy, she wasn’t oblivious to the eye rolls and bouts of agitation between them.

“You need to have a talk with him. I didn’t get the impression that he was going to do much with the nonprofit besides supporting the artistic side. He’s not exactly a major negotiator or a businessman. You heard him say he would have experts to do all that. He’s a smart man, and he loves you.” At the edge of the road, where the main road met the lane leading to the school, Luce took a deep breath. “I do love it here in short doses. At home I’d be staring at skyscrapers and smelling garbage.” She laughed.

“If the business doesn’t work out, there are plenty of options for me to return to. But…”

Luce looked at her expectantly.

“I really want to be with Sage. I love him, Luce.” She sighed dreamily. “He’s so…”

“Hot?”

She laughed. “Yeah, but…”

“Thoughtful? Rich? Sexy? A good lover? Strong? Protective? Take your pick. You can stop me anytime.”

“He’s so…good. He’s genuinely caring, Luce. I can feel how good of a person he is, and the rest is like icing on the cake.”
And what a delicious cake he is. What am I gonna do when he leaves?

SAGE HAD WORKED on the canvas through the afternoon while Kate and Luce were in the village. She couldn’t get back soon enough. He wanted time with her—every second he could get before he had to leave. He’d been waiting for her to bring up the details of the nonprofit and, really, the details of their futures and what they both wanted. He had wanted to bring it up a hundred times. He was anxious as hell about leaving her, and every time he walked into her hut, the sight of her sticky notes and day planner full of must-do items were reminders of the organization that Kate depended on in her life. He wanted to give her that comfort even if he wasn’t one hundred percent sure of all of the details himself.

He found Kate in her hut, working her way through one of her lists. Before opening the screened door, he drank her in for a minute. It would be more than a week before he saw her again, and though he was trying to be strong around her, every time he saw her, he was struck with a feeling of longing for the days he’d miss.

“How’s it going?”

“Great. I’m just going over the things I need to wrap up before I leave here. I can hardly believe how soon I leave.” She looked up at him with sadness in her eyes. “And I really can’t believe you leave tomorrow.”

“Yeah, we should talk about that.” He settled his hand on her shoulder, and her smile faltered. He’d gotten so used to waking up beside her every morning, having coffee together, and meeting up again in the afternoon that he couldn’t imagine how he would make it through a week of not seeing her.

“Want to spend our last afternoon together at the beach?” he asked. The memory of making love to Kate at the beach sent a bolt of heat searing through him. He cleared his throat to bring his focus back to her.

Kate rose to her feet. “Sure.”

“Where are you going?”

“To get my bathing suit on.”

“Damn.”

She laughed. “I didn’t say I’d keep it on.”

An hour later, they were lying on the hot sandy beach. Sage’s hands moved slowly across Kate’s back, basting her with suntan lotion and loving the feel of her while he memorized the curves of her body.

“Do I really have to leave tomorrow?” He wished like hell he didn’t have a show coming up. He’d love nothing more than to stay until Kate had to leave, then return home together. He set the lotion aside and took her hand as she sat up and moved closer to him.

“I know. I keep wondering the same thing.”

“It’s gonna suck being away from you,” he admitted.

“I know. I’m so used to you that I know when you leave I’ll be looking for you every time I go into the school or when I walk by your cabin.” She lowered her eyes. “And when I go to bed at night. I’m not sure I know how to sleep alone anymore.”

“Where do we go from here, Kate?” He watched her take a deep breath and blow it out slowly, wondering if she was as nervous as he was.

“I leave a week after you, and I’ll go to my parents. Then...”

“How long would you like to be with them before visiting me?”
A day? Two? A week?
He wondered if she could hear the desperation he felt.

She nibbled on her lower lip. “I don’t know. A few days, maybe?”

He breathed a sigh of relief. “Have you given any thought to how much time you want to spend with me?”

“I’ve only thought about it every second of every day.”

Her cheeks flushed, and he pulled her to his chest and folded her in his arms. “Me too.”

“How long do you want me to visit?”

“Forever and a day.”

She smiled. “No, really?”

“Really.” He’d thought about it over and over, and he couldn’t put a limit on their time together. He was already having heart palpitations about leaving her. Why would he want to go through that again in a few weeks?

“You want me to…stay?”

“More than anything. Until you get sick of me.”

“Really? Oh my God, I want that too. I didn’t want to have to leave you again. Would you mind meeting my parents?”

“Your parents, your friends, your elementary school teachers. I’ll meet anyone you want me to, and I want you to meet my family, even if I’m worried about them scaring you off.”

She laughed. “I’m trying to be okay with not knowing where we’re headed and not having firm plans in place for myself career-wise, but I’m afraid I’m not doing a very good job of it. I’m scared to death about where to turn. I mean, you have this idea, but there’s nothing tangible yet, and I don’t want to be a freeloader when I visit.”

“Freeloader? You’re kidding, right?”

“No. I’m not.”

The seriousness in her voice shouldn’t have taken him by surprise, but it did.

“I’ve always had a job, a focus, and I can’t just go stay with you and hang out all day. I wouldn’t know what to do with myself.”

“Kate.” He pulled her onto his lap and drew her legs around his waist. “Let’s talk about the nonprofit. It’s a big talk. I’m gonna hold you tight so neither of us can dodge the conversation.” He wrapped his arms around her waist. “I got an email from my lawyer and my accountant, and they both think it’s a viable business to pursue. I want to do it, but I want to be very clear about what I’d actually do. I’m not a businessman. I’m an artist. I’ll trust my attorney, my accountant, and whoever we hire to run the business to take care of that side of things. If you agree to be part of it, and I hope you will, then you’d define what you want to do and we’ll work around it. Assuming we’re a couple—and that’s what I want more than anything else. I hope you know that.”

“I do.”

“Good. God, Kate, you’ve become everything to me.” He ran his hand down her shoulder. “Sorry. I got sidetracked. Anyway, if you travel, I travel. I want to be part of it all, but I’m not a director. I’m the guy who makes the stuff that brings in funding. And you’re the woman who figures out who to help and makes it happen with the communities, I think—unless you feel differently.”

“Are you kidding? It would be a dream come true. But can you just take off and travel for whatever amount of time it takes? I mean, the coordination with local officials will take time, and then the actual implementation of wells or other programs, that’ll take time, too.”

“This is what I want to do, and I want to do it with you. I’ll make it happen. This whole thing has made me really rethink my life. I live in the Village because it’s convenient, but I hate it.
God, do I hate it
. I mean, in small doses it’s great, but being here with you, actually spending time with someone who values the same things I do and who enjoys the outdoors as much as I do, it’s been incredible. I feel like we’re totally in sync, and I’m one hundred percent on board with all of this.”