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A Million Different Ways (Horn Duet 1)

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“Hear me out. We can sail from Cap Ferrat to Sardinia.”

“What’s it like––Sardinia?”

“Wild and beautiful…like you,” he murmured.

“I’m not wild,” I smirked.

His expression transformed from playful to thoughtful, his eyes two bottomless pools of love. “You are when you’re making love to me.”

My smile slipped.

“Sometimes I think I’m dreaming,” he murmured, speaking so quietly that I had to read his lips. “I wake up just to watch you sleep…sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and I’m still in ICU.”

My jaw clenched painfully. The heartfelt confession killed me. I couldn’t even reassure him because I knew I would be disappearing very soon. I wanted to take away all his pain––I had never wanted something so badly. “You’re the dream I never allowed myself to have.” I didn’t realize I had said it out loud until his eyes flashed and squeezed shut, capturing those words forever. He knew what that monumental declaration from me meant. I rarely expressed my feelings verbally. I’m just not built that way.

“I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I thank God every day for delivering you to me,” he said softly. “Everything makes sense now.” I bit my trembling lip, held his gaze and swallowed back words that wanted to explode out of me. Words like… forgive me, I’m sorry. I’ll love you forever, my very best friend. “You’ll love Sardinia. The sun seems to shine more golden there. The water runs from emerald green to powder blue. The coastline––” drawing a map of it with his finger down my back, “is jagged. I found this small, hidden beach last time I was there.” His kiss turned into a smile on my shoulder. “I want to make love to you with the sun on my back and your dark hair spread out on the white sand.”

I could picture it in my mind’s eyes. “Sounds wonderful,” I replied, lost in that amber gaze full of love and hope. “Although not the part where I get scratchy sand in my bum––and may I remind you that if I attempt to leave the country, I will be deported back to Albania so fast my head will spin.”

“I’m working on that.”

Huh? My skin prickled with awareness. My head lifted off the pillow. “What does that mean?”

There was a smile in his eyes when he said, “I wanted to tell you over a nice dinner with a good bottle of champagne, but it appears I’m going to be nagged until I cough up the goods.” Chuckling, he turned over onto his back, and I pounced on his chest, unable to contain my excitement.

“Ooomph––I think you broke a rib.”

“Out with it. What did you mean?” I shrieked.

He held me steady, cupping the cheeks of my rear end, while I attempted to shake the information out of him. “My lawyers are in the middle of negotiating with the Albanian Ministry of Justice.”

He might as well have dropped a piano on my head. “Will you ever cease to amaze me? Since when?”

“I hope not,” he murmured, a shy smile growing on his face. “A couple of weeks. They’ve been amenable to our attempts to reconcile the situation as expediently as possible.”

“In other words?”

“In other words, I’m ready to write them a check as soon as they clear you of any wrong doing.”

My jaw went slack, couldn’t feel my own lips as I began speaking. “Are you insane? Write them a check? For how much??”

“The full amount,” he replied casually.

“Three million dollars?!!! But…but I had nothing to do with it! This…this is absurd!” He flipped me onto my back, pinning me to the mattress, and licked my nipple before tugging it gently with his teeth. My back arched, my eyes slammed shut. The devil had a better relationship with my body than I did. “You can’t do that when we’re having a serious conversation. It’s not fair,” I moaned.

“Darlin’, I never fight fair. That’s a strict rule of mine,” he drawled in a lazy, seductive voice.

“Now you’re really cheating.” Two can play that game. He gasped when my hips hitched up and pressed into his erection. “There’s no way I’m letting you do that. I’ll go back before I let you spend that kind of money on me.”

Turning serious in a heartbeat, he grabbed my face and tilted it so we were nose to nose. “Listen to me, baby,” his eyes boring into mine, “that’s pocket change for me. I won’t even know it’s gone. I’d give everything I have to protect you.”

That was the thing with Sebastian––he never boasted or exaggerated. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said. Always. I bit my lower lip in a feeble attempt to stop it from trembling. “I love you so much. It scares me that you don’t have an ounce of self-preservation sometimes. Do you know what this could do to you if it ever got out? I won’t be responsible for harming one hair on your precious head.”


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