They arrived at her cottage, and as she opened the door to let Nash in, she wished she could have had the chance to clean up a bit first. Kevin’s stuff was all over the place. The gaming console his father had given him against her will (but with her money, of course) last Christmas. School books. Snack wrappers. His cereal bowl from breakfast, which rarely made it into the sink or the dishwasher unless she put it there. Ashley’s things were there too. Her books, the half-done blanket she’d been knitting for the past year. A nail polish bottle on the coffee table. Dozens of pictures of her and Kevin and her family. And the flowers she’d cut from her tiny garden and put into vases.
“You’ve got a great place,” he said with a smile after he took it all in.
“I love that it’s mine and Kevin’s. It’s our safe space.”
“Thank you for inviting me into your safe space.”
Calling on every ounce of her self-control to keep from kissing him again, she asked, “What can I get you to drink? Tea, coffee, sparkling water?”
“Coffee would be great. Jet lag is always roughest when I fly west.”
“I don’t know how you handle all that traveling,” she said as she began to brew his coffee. But she couldn’t do small talk with him. Not when they’d shared so much right from the start. And not when she still couldn’t quite wrap her head around his being in Bar Harbor. “Surely you could have found another VW van somewhere else. Why here?”
He sat on one of the barstools in her open-plan kitchen and living room. “Do you really need to ask why? Don’t you already know? Just like you, I thought it was good-bye in Vienna. But I couldn’t stay away, Ash.”
She licked her lips, her heart thudding hard behind her breastbone. “I shouldn’t have kissed you at the café. Josh had pushed all my buttons, and I was trying to prove to him that I’m not the pathetic spinster he thinks I am. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have used you to prove a point.”
“You don’t need to apologize for anything. I don’t care why you kissed me. I’m just glad you did. And you should know that if you hadn’t made the first move, I would have kissed you.”
“Nash.” His name came out a little breathy. It was so hard to keep it together around him. “We can’t be together. I thought we agreed on that in Vienna. I thought we both understood that the rock star and the small-town single mom could never work. Not in the real world. Not outside of a blip in time where we got to be different people for twenty-four hours in an exotic locale.” Especially when gossip about Nash’s past was sure to surface as quickly as gossip about their kiss.
“I hear what you’re saying. Of course I do.” He paused before asking, “But have you missed me, Ash? Have you thought about me at all during these past six weeks, the way I’ve thought about you?”
The last vestige of self-preservation had her backing away from him, pressing herself into the corner of the kitchen counter to put more space between them.
“Of course I did,” she admitted, barely above a whisper. “How could I not? But that doesn’t mean—”
“I don’t know what it means either, Ash.” He came toward her. “All I know is that I haven’t stopped thinking about you. Not from the second that we said good-bye. Every moment of every day and all through each night, you’ve been inside my head. I’ve thought of you again and again and again.” He took another step closer. “You’re right that I probably could have found a van somewhere else. But when I found one in your town, it felt like a sign. A sign I needed to follow. I couldn’t stay away. I had to come.” He moved to stand directly in front of her. “And I have to do this.”
A heartbeat later, his mouth was on hers.
As it hit her, yet again, just how beautiful and glorious it was to be in Nash’s arms, Ashley temporarily forgot all the reasons why not.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nash relished having Ashley in his arms, her lips beneath his, her hands in his hair as she drew him closer.
Everything he’d said about how he couldn’t get her out of his head, out of his body, out of his heart, was true. Though he’d spent only twenty-four hours with her in Vienna, he’d missed her like hell during the past six weeks.
At first, he’d tried to convince himself that his connection with Ashley was simply physical, an itch he had to scratch until she was out of his system. But she was different from any woman he’d ever been with. He’d never liked anyone as much as he liked her. He’d never been friends with any other woman he’d slept with. And he’d certainly never felt such a strong connection with any woman but Ashley.