No Damaged Goods

Absolutely gorgeous is an understatement.

Worth staying for is more like it.

But not nearly as much as the man by my side, his fingers twined snug in mine as we walk the paths through the hills, moving quietly beneath new leaves that turn the sunlight green-gold and sweet.

Blake and I walk like this often now.

It’s part of my therapy, putting a little more heft on his leg with the slope of the hills.

It’s also just become part of us.

Part of our routine, after we see Andrea out the door and before we go our separate ways for work, only to come together again in the evening.

I can’t shake how Andrea seemed troubled this morning. Heading off to school with a frown pulling her lips down. She’d barely talked to me when normally we chatter our heads off through breakfast, whether or not she actually deigns to acknowledge her father’s existence.

Sigh.

Probably boy trouble.

Even after everything, she and Clark are still dancing around in this are-we-or-aren’t-we way that only teenagers do.

I’m not her mother. I can’t force her to talk to me.

But I am her friend, and I know she’ll talk when she’s ready.

When she needs me.

“Something on your mind?” Blake rumbles, his thumb stroking over my knuckles.

I look up with a smile, taking in the brilliant blue depths of his eyes.

“Yeah. I just think Andrea’s bickering with Clark again. I worry about her.”

Blake grimaces. “I’ll stop worrying when she finally gets sick of him. He’s still a punk, even if he did me a solid.”

I laugh. “You’d think any boy who likes your daughter is a punk.”

“Because he is.”

“Oh, stop!” Laughing, I lean on him, resting my head to the delicious tone of his upper arm. “You’ll get used to it someday. He’ll grow on you.”

“Never,” he vows, but those eyes gleam with mischief and amusement. “Honestly, that’s better than what I thought you might be worrying over.”

I cock my head, my brows knitting. “What else would I be worried about?”

He hesitates, gaze darkening, that hint of a smile fading.

“California,” he grunts finally.

Ah. Right.

That envelope’s been sitting on the table in the foyer for a week now, waiting like a royal decree.

Waiting for me to make a phone call, a choice, a decision.

Because there’s an artist in California who wants to sign the rights to my song away and make it part of her catalog.

A really, really famous artist.

A really obnoxious, infamous pop artist who took a shine to my music and my story when it made some news along the West Coast. Apparently, she went through her own fair share of big bad danger before the men of Enguard Security came to her rescue.

But there’s a catch. There always is.

She wants me to leave.

She wants me to come be part of her entourage and help write songs just for her.

Everything I’ve always wanted.

That song I wrote with all my heart, for Blake and Blake alone…

But I’ve still given it to so many hearts on the airwaves, so they can feel what I do.

I guess he doesn’t know.

I already made the phone call this morning, while he was in the shower.

I tilt my head back, looking up at him with a faint smile. We make our way out of the trees, toward the inn waiting in the distance with that long, curving cliff dropping down over the valley.

“California’s lovely in summer,” I say. “Have you ever been?”

“No.” Blake looks dismayed, wrinkling his nose. “Never been much for the big city life. That’s more Holt’s thing.”

“No? So you wouldn’t want to visit?”

His expression looks strained. “You saying you’re heading out there?”

“Next week,” I say—then relent as his face falls like a kicked puppy. I can’t do this to him, and I laugh, stopping and squeezing his hand and leaning into him. “For a weekend, I mean. Just to handle some contract stuff. Then I’m coming right back.”

Blake breathes in sharply, his cragged brows lifting, those intense eyes locked on me with something like hope. “You’re not leaving Heart’s Edge?”

“Why would I?” I drape my body against him, wrapping my arms around his neck. “Everything I want is right here. I don’t need to live in California to write music, Blake. I make the best music when I’m here. At home. With you.”

Even after two months of lovely sweetness, domesticity, our time together a mix of comfortable silences, laughter, and devastatingly hot passion…

It still makes my heart beat hard to be so forward, so true with my feelings.

Yet Blake has proven time and time again that I can trust him.

I can let him have every last piece of my heart.

He smiles, slow and hot and pleased, settling his hands on my hips. “Then I guess it’s a damn good thing we’re right where we are,” he growls.

I don’t understand.

Suddenly, he pulls back, takes my hand, and leads me to the edge of the cliff.