“I just need you to trust me this one more time. Just till we get home.”
Home. That was the word that did it. Because she knew that his idea of home and her idea of home were two entirely different things. The knowledge that at home, in the real world, they had no place in each other’s lives stabbed sharp as a knife through her heart. Which, because of its implications for the future state of that heart, scared her to death.
She stopped dead. As he turned to frown questioningly at her, she folded her arms over her chest, lifted her chin at him, and said, “Just so we’re clear, I haven’t flown in a plane since the last one I was in crashed and burned. I haven’t had sex with anyone but you since my husband died. I live a quiet, peaceful, stable life as a college professor, and I like it. I don’t do death-defying stunts, and I don’t do one-night stands with dangerous men who flit through my life like a puff of smoke and then disappear. I’m not brave, or adventurous, or sexually uninhibited. That isn’t me. It won’t ever be me.”
“Gina.” His eyes slid over her, then rose to meet hers as he reached out to catch her by the arms. She couldn’t quite read what was in them, but his mouth curved in the slightest of wry smiles, which made her think she was amusing him, which had her frowning direly at him. “You parachuted off a mountain with me: in my book, that makes you pretty brave. You came here to Attu, which makes you plenty adventurous. As for sexually uninhibited”—his eyes glinted at her in a way that served as a graphic reminder of everything he’d done to her and she’d done to him, and, not coincidentally, set her heart to knocking—“you’ll do. You have my personal guarantee.”
Shaking her head no, she burst out with, “But that was a one-time thing. That isn’t me.”
“Maybe,” he said, “that’s you with me.”
That rendered her speechless. She searched his eyes, and at what she saw blazing at her from the coffee-brown depths, butterflies fluttered to life in her stomach. Maybe the crazy-hot attraction she felt for him, maybe the way her body quaked and burned at his slightest touch, maybe the explosion of passion she’d experienced with him that was like nothing she’d ever felt before had an explanation just that simple. This was a different, fresh relationship. This was how she and Cal were together. This was them. You with me.
Her mind boggled. Her heart skipped a beat.
He continued, “As far as I’m concerned, last night wasn’t a one-night stand, and I’m not planning on vanishing from your life like a puff of smoke unless you want me to. I think what we have going on here, this thing between us, might be the start of something special. We could try it out. I could bring you flowers, take you to dinner, that kind of thing. See where it goes.”
Something—hope, happiness, a promise of fresh, new love—burst to life inside her heart like the first delicate spring crocus shooting up through a long winter’s worth of snow.
She smiled at him, a beautiful sunburst of a smile, which immediately turned into a suspicious frown as a thought hit her.
“You’re not just saying that to get me on that damned airplane, are you?”
He laughed, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her. Hot and sweet at first, the kiss soon turned hot and urgent, and by the time he let her go the snow was practically melting around them and Gina was blissfully convinced that he’d meant every word he’d said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
During the hours-long trek to camp, the weather deteriorated. More heavy gray clouds rolled in to hang low in the sky and turn what had been a pale but relatively clear morning as gloomy and dark as if dusk had fallen. The temperature dropped and the wind picked up until it bit at their cheeks and whistled around their ears. Fog blew in, not in a heavy blanket but in thick wisps that formed islands of mist floating just above the ground. The snowfall grew heavier, wetter. Every indicator was there: another major storm was on the way. The only questions were, when would it hit and would they be caught out in it.