‘I don’t know what that means.’
‘It means I want more.’
The softly spoken words hung there in the dry, hot midday air. And Bridget didn’t know which of them would reach for th
em first. Slowly, very slowly, she turned around, murmuring, ‘Say that again?’
‘You heard me the first time,’ he answered, but there was no rancour to his tone.
This time when he approached her and reached for her, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
More to the point, she didn’t want to.
‘More?’
‘A lot more.’
Yet it wasn’t the words that got under her skin—or, at least, it wasn’t only the words—it was also that stunned, raw expression in his gaze that was her undoing. It made her throat parched and her voice scratchy.
And it also made her oddly, perhaps irrationally, angry.
‘You suddenly decide you want more? You come haring up here on some pretext of a reassignment? And you expect me to drop everything and welcome you with open arms?’
‘You think I’m going to change my mind,’ he stated clearly. Empathetically.
She was terrified he would change his mind. But she didn’t need to tell him that, not least because she was still trying to process what he’d said.
‘I don’t think you’ll change your mind. I fully expect that you will,’ she shot back. ‘Because, no matter what you say now, your career comes first with you. Just as mine does with me.’
‘There’s no reason why we can’t have both.’ He lifted his hands to cup her cheeks. ‘A wise woman once told me that, only I wasn’t ready to listen to her.’
Bridget told herself that she wanted to pull away.
Only she didn’t. Not a millimetre. She just stayed right where she was, her eyes locked with Hayden’s and her feet rooted in place.
‘And now you are ready?’ she asked a little breathlessly.
He shot her a look she could only describe as solemn.
‘For the rest of my life,’ he assured her.
‘The rest of your life?’ she echoed, almost in wonder.
This all felt very real, and yet wholly unreal. It couldn’t be happening to her, surely?
‘The rest of our lives,’ Hayden corrected. ‘You only have to say you’ll take me back.’
She wasn’t entirely sure it was a request. It sounded more like a command, albeit couched in the softest terms. Yet it was a command she felt she could obey.
For the first time since she’d walked outside she smiled.
* * *
How could it be that her smile shone brighter than the equatorial sun? And seared him twice as strongly?
He’d never dreamt he’d ever find a woman like Bridget, who made him feel complete when he hadn’t known he’d even been broken. He’d spent years congratulating himself that he hadn’t fallen into the same relationship trap that friends and colleagues alike had fallen into. One night with Bridget and he’d stepped right into it and had never even realised it.
‘I’m not a man of words, Birdie,’ he told her apologetically. ‘I’m usually a man of action. I don’t know how to tell you what you’ve come to mean to me, but I hoped by coming up here with my team it would prove it to you instead.’