She pulled back far enough to see his face. “How are you here? You said you couldn’t come home for Christmas.”
He let her slide down his body, but his hands gripped her hips, kneading a little, as if he couldn’t quite let her go either. “I pulled a few strings. I had to give you your Christmas present in person.”
“I don’t want anything but you.”
Amusement and heat lit his eyes as a grin curved his lips. “I think you’ll want this.”
Her heart went slow and thick in her chest as he turned away and dug in one of the pockets of the bag. Was he…?
He pulled out a fat envelope and passed it over. “Open it.”
The back flap wasn’t sealed. She slid the contents out and unfolded the pile, finding a bunch of paperwork with official-looking seals from the United States Army. “What am I looking at?”
“I should probably have put the last page on the front. It ought to make more sense.”
Shuffling the pages, she found a letter from the University of Mississippi Medical School.
Dear Mr. Malone,
We are pleased to offer you a position in our incoming class for the coming fall semester—
Her head snapped up. “This is an acceptance into medical school.”
His grin turned smug. “It is.”
“Which makes all the rest of this—?”
“My paperwork to separate from the Army. I’m not gonna re-up. I’m coming home for good.”
I’m coming home. His words echoed through her head, pinging around until they settled in her heart, warming it like a coal. “Really?”
“Really.”
“Ryan,” she whispered. Then she was in his arms again, her mouth on his, the papers squashed between them. He was coming home.
Some time later, when they’d surfaced to breathe, she demanded, “How long have you been sitting on this?”
“I started working on it right after I left you last Christmas.” He combed his fingers through her hair in that way he had and smiled at her. “I told you, you made me want something else.”
She hadn’t known he’d been ready to change everything. He hadn’t said a word. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
On a shrug, he dropped into a chair, tugging her into his lap. “What if you changed your mind about me? About us?”
“Ryan Malone, that is not gonna happen.”
“I don’t know,” he drawled. “You might get sick of seeing me all the time.”
“That’s going to take a very, very long time. And I’d like to see more of you in very short order.”
Grinning, he tipped his face up to hers. “I support this plan. How far to your new place? You can give me the naked tour and then you can see as much of me as you want for the next—oh—forty-eight hours or so.”
Her body went molten at the idea of two whole uninterrupted days with him. And then reality knocked her over the head. “That sounds—amazing. But there’s just one thing we have to do first.”
“Stop for condoms? I’ve got that covered.”
She snorted a laugh. “Look at you, being all Mr. Boy Scout. But no. I wasn’t expecting you and…well, my parents are in town for Christmas.”
His face blanked. “They’re staying with you?”