“Yeah. I was scared.” Really scared. The darkness had been like a greasy vapor. “Then someone came and helped me.” I pushed my brows together, looking up at Luke. From this angle the jaw line, the messy brown hair—the same! “Was it you?”
“Without your speech the other night, I never would have started to remember. When I listened to it, I thought I was only imagining being there because you were such an immersive storyteller, but looking back, and being rational, I do honestly recall acrid air, kneeling down, and pushing hair off someone’s face.”
My breath caught. “My hair had fallen into my face as I struggled.” Only the person who’d rescued me would remember that. “Luke!” I gasped, rising up on tiptoe and tilting my chin upward. “It was you!” I whispered, and lunged forward to kiss his beautiful lips.
Luke met me halfway, taking me with his kiss. It was a kiss that combined passion and revelation, connection and rediscovery. A kiss of total rejuvenation.
He pulled me to him, and I arched my back to feel his closeness. Another pass, and I rested my palm against his square jaw, feeling it, seeing it all those years ago in my mind’s eye, and now here it was, right in my possession.
“Sheridan, you are so beautiful and amazing,” he whispered between kisses. “This has to be the strangest, most circuitous path for falling in love, but I don’t care.”
Love? He loved me? Or, he was at least falling in love with me?
I kissed him again, and this time he shifted gears, and things were moving in a new direction. And my bed was not far away.
Uh, I’d been married, and I knew that I was not someone with a long fuse. Luke Hotwell’s burning kisses shortened that fuse considerably.
“Luke, let’s be wise here …”
“Sheridan, in my dream, we were husband and wife.”
Married! My insides flipped over. A few times. Married to Luke. And he wanted that feeling again. My insides did a happy cheer as he kissed me more fervently—and then they started doing the rumba, the dance of love.
“That was in your dream, not in this reality,” I managed between Latin beats thrumming in my brain.
“But it could be,” he mumbled as he kissed my neck, my eyelids, my forehead, my lips. “Have these weeks together shown you what they’ve shown me? That we’re great for each other? That we’re better when we’re together? That we complete each other?”
Did Luke really believe all of that, or was he just trying to inch me toward consummating his imaginary marriage to me? My body chemistry didn’t really care. It was giving a huge head-nodding yep! to all his suggestions.
“When I said”—I managed between assaults of his kisses—“that I loved you”—he kissed me again, steering me in the direction my body and soul longed to go—“it might have been one of those in vino veritas moments. I was giddy with happiness.”
“Good.” His hands were on my hips, and I wanted to wrap myself around him. “Then, I’ll tell you the rest of the dream.”
Whew. He was going to give me a little hormone reprieve. Maybe I could gather my wits and my senses in the meantime. And my willpower against all the forces sending me into his arms, and beyond. There were appropriate times for things, and this was not quite one of them. No matter how much all systems screamed go.
“Come here.” Luke led me to the armchair across from my bed and sat down in it, settling me on his lap. He traced infinity shapes on my back. Symbolic of our eternal love? I couldn’t help hoping so. “We were lying there, and a sunbeam lit my eye. I opened it and saw you lying in the light. I’d never seen anything so beautiful. You kissed me like I was everything in the universe, and I succumbed to the feeling. It was the most powerful thing I’d ever felt in my life.”
Keep talking, soldier. You’re wooing me, all right. I should’ve insisted this conversation take place in a crowded department store, not five feet from my high-thread-count sheets. “Uh-huh.” I closed my eyes and pictured it.
“But you left me there, told me to come up with a story to tell your dad about surgery, and then you went off singing in the shower. At that point, I was starting to wonder what was going on, because it seemed too real.”
“You thought my kiss and my love were real.”
“Can you explain the song? The other things that were real?”
Good point. But at that point in time, I hadn’t been in love with Luke Hotwell. I’d wanted to sue him in court. Except, I’d been in love with my rescuer. I just didn’t know they were one and the same person. “Go on.”
“Then, I went downstairs.” He described the Dewing paintings on the wall on the curving staircase.
“But I don’t have any Dewing paintings.”
“But he’s your favorite. And you have one now.”
“Oh.” Another good point. His kisses had dizzied me, and they were blurring my logic, and I was agreeing with his every point. “What else was different?”
“Dog dish.” He rested his forehead against my arm. “Guess the dog’s name on it.”
I didn’t need to guess. “You totally freaked me out with that one.”