Snowbound

try to hide her tears or wipe her nose. “It’s still open. I

said whenever, and I meant whenever. Even if it took…”

She couldn’t finish.

Once again his arms were around her. “Months?”

“Forever,” she choked out.

HE WIPED HER TEARS and grabbed a paper towel from her

kitchen so she could blow her nose. Then he had to kiss

her, of course. These last six weeks, it had been all he

could do to stay away from her. He’d lived for the moment

he could kiss her again. He’d prayed it would come.

He’d known all along that she might reject him.

She’d driven away almost four months ago. In that time,

he’d neither e-mailed nor called. It had come to seem

foolish even to imagine that he could knock on her door

out of the blue and be received with any kind of joy.

But in this kiss she gave herself with all the generosity that had drawn him to her in the first place. She held him tightly, she murmured his name, she pulled

back to look up at him with something like wonder.

“I can’t believe it.”

He grimaced. “That I’m here? Or that I was ever willing to admit what a jackass I’ve been?”

She laughed, as if she was too giddy to prevent it.

“Well…both.”

“Thanks,” he said wryly, and she laughed again.

He ran his knuckles down her cheek, stunned by the

amazing softness and by the trusting way she tilted her

face to meet his touch. “You busy?” His voice emerged

gruffly, and he nodded toward the laptop open on her

table. “I could come back…”

“Don’t be silly.” Fiona grabbed his hand and drew

him into the living area. “Do you want coffee? Soda?”

He shook his head as he sat on the couch. You. Only

you. “I just had a latte grande. My equivalent of a drink

for courage.”

“Well, then.” Fiona sat, too, on the middle cushion

so she was close enough to touch. She tucked one foot

under her and turned to face him. “You really just

packed up and went to Portland for two weeks? Did you

close the lodge?”

“No.” He shook his head in remembered bemusement. “My younger sister, Liz—I told you about her.”

She nodded.

“Liz grew impatient with me. She came for a visit.

So I thought. Turns out she’d gone so far as to make me

an appointment with the psychologist, and to take two

weeks of vacation herself. She gave me the key to her

condo, told me if I wasn’t comfortable staying at Mom

and Dad’s I could go there and sent me on my way.”

“Just like that.”

“I’d gotten those e-mails from Tabitha and Dieter not

long before.” Because he couldn’t help himself, he

reached out and took her hand. “I was scared. Which

meant I was ready.”

“Was it hard?” she asked, her eyes meltingly soft.

“Talking to the counselor?”

Even remembering was enough to bring a shadow of

the tension that had made his body rigid. “Yeah.” He

moved his shoulders, trying to release the strain that

memory—and the knowledge of what he still had to say

to her—had brought to his body. “Yeah, I wanted to run

out of there so bad I could taste it.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No.” He looked down at their linked hands, where

his thumb was tracing circles on her palm. “I thought

about you. Over and over again.”

Her smile was tremulous. “I’ve tried so hard not to

think about you. And failed. Over and over again.”

“I thought you’d put me out of your mind,” he admitted. “Hope was…a little hard to hold on to.”

Her eyes shimmered with tears again. “Yes. It is.”

“There are things I need to tell you, Fiona.”

“You don’t have to right now. Maybe I shouldn’t

have put that kind of pressure on you…”

He was shaking his head before she’d gotten half

way through her speech. “No. You were right. I need to

get this out of the way. I think I locked it away for a lot

of reasons. One was that I felt so guilty, on some level

I didn’t think anybody would—or could—love me once