Officer, Surgeon...Gentleman!

Cole winced at Amelia’s outrage. “That’s not how I’d put it.”

“How would you put it?” She pointed the tip of the spatula at him. “You were the one who said we were only about sex.”

“You and I were never just about sex.” He reached for the spatula, but she shook her head, waving the tool menacingly at him. Sighing, he dropped his hands to his sides, wanting to touch her, take her into his arms and tell her all the things in his heart. Could she ever forgive him? “I have never felt about any woman the way I feel about you, Amelia.”

Her eyes darkened, closed, reopened with uncertainty in their shiny depths. “Once upon a time you could say the same thing about my sister.”

“Clara and I were about friendship and mutual understanding of each other. We got along so well I just assumed the natural next step was marriage because I felt so comfortable with her.”

She lowered the grilling tool. “Am I comfortable, too, Cole?”

“Comfortable?” He had to laugh at her question. “Amelia, you are more like a hot poker to my backside.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“I meant that in the nicest possible way.”

“Because hot pokers to backsides have a nice way.”

Her sarcasm wasn’t lost on him, and he struggled to explain. “You push me to be more, to take chances, to see things in a different light. You make me want to move forward and walk planks that drop off into unknown seas just to experience them with you.”

“I don’t push you.”

“Perhaps you don’t realize the effect you have on me, the effect you’ve always had, but let me assure you, you have impacted my life in untold ways.”

“Because I’m Clara’s little sister?”

“Because you are you, Amelia Earhart Stockton, the woman I love with all my heart. Let me love you.”

Dared Amelia believe him? God, she wanted to. So badly. But to what avail? She could never trust him. Not with her heart. She’d constantly be waiting for the next time he’d leave and wasn’t sure she could endure the pain of him abandoning her again.

“You’re too late.”

He winced, as if she’d struck him with the spatula she held. She dropped the tool onto the grill’s side table.

“If you’d said something on the ship, perhaps I could believe you. Perhaps things could have worked. As is, there is too much bad blood between us, Cole.”

“Because of Clara?”

“Because of what happened between us,” she insisted. “Because of the fact you shut me out, ripped my heart to shreds on the night we made love when you insisted it was just sex, that all we were was sex.”

“I had to protect you.”

“Protect me? You broke my heart, Cole.”

“If I hadn’t put space between us, we’d have made love again.”

“Had sex, and, yes, you’re probably right, we probably would have.”

“We might have been caught. I couldn’t let you risk your career that way. Not for me. Not when you’d hate me if I cost you your career.”

“I loved you, Cole.”

“And now you don’t?”

She bit her lip, not wanting to answer him.

“Because, like someone once said to me, I don’t believe you.”