He found all his clothes and dressed. There was nothing keeping him here because he’d made sure not to give her any information to get in touch with him while he was gone. It was better that way, he knew. Jared’s brother had been overseas for eight months and Jessie had missed the birth of a daughter by a girlfriend he’d rushed to marry on his last leave.
With Jessie’s crumbling personal life as a cautionary tale, Jared planned to leave well enough alone with Heather. He wouldn’t make his brother’s mistakes or foist off that kind of loneliness on Heather, no matter that his first instinct was to ask her to write to him. See him again when he came home.
If he came home.
No. This was the right decision. He sat beside her on the bed and stroked her silky hair where it spilled over on her bare shoulder. She gripped the pillow beside her head, fingers flexing in the down as she sighed in her sleep.
She slept hard and she played hard. He’d learned that much about her in the past thirty hours. He didn’t always meet a lot of women because he tended to be more quiet and intense than the easygoing types who could lay on the charm and score every night. That didn’t bother Jared, necessarily, but he appreciated Heather for seeing his interest and seeking him out. Damn but she turned him on.
She rolled to her back, her breasts lifting high over the top of the sheet for one breath-catching moment.
And just like that his brain tripped into imaginative high gear, thinking how easy it would be to slip under the covers right now and wake her up as he slid inside her. But they were out of time.
He bent to kiss her forehead in the darkened room, knowing damn well some lucky bastard would probably snap her up while he was gone. And while he wouldn’t try to hold her back from moving forward with her life, that didn’t change the fact that he would be leaving a piece of himself in Savannah, Georgia.
* * *
He drove back to the main building at the Timberline Lodge, knowing damn well what he had to do. He’d started off the weekend thinking he had to test if Heather could be the missing piece of the puzzle that made his life feel so empty these past few Christmases. He’d tried telling himself it was the war, the posttrauma of war, the stress of getting acclimated to life outside the military, but now he couldn’t pretend it was anything other than the loss of a woman he’d fallen in love with in the course of one hot weekend.
His cell phone rang as he pulled into the long driveway that wound through the woods to the lodge. The ID showed the inn, so he picked up expecting Heather.
“Hello?”
“Jared, I’m so glad I found you.”
Helen Krause’s voice on the other end of the phone surprised him. She seemed to be whispering on the other end of the line while a piano banged out “Jingle Bell Rock” somewhere in the background.
“What’s up?” He hoped she didn’t need him to fix anything. He’d made sure he wasn’t on call for flying this weekend while Heather was in town, but he’d done a fair amount of work for the Krauses over the past year.
“It’s Heather.” The two words commanded his full attention.
“What about her?” He speeded up his pace on the winding road.
“Roland just saw her pulling a suitcase up the path behind the lodge.” She hesitated while the piano in the background ended the tune with a flourish and a round of clapping ensued, probably a special entertainment in the dining room.
“A suitcase?” He repeated the word blankly, wondering if there could be any reasonable explanation for her toting around her weekend bag.
“We don’t mean to pry, dear, but we had a good feeling about her when the two of you checked in yesterday and we wanted to make sure—”
“You did the right thing and I’m going to build you that whole damn new kitchen you want for the inn to thank you.” He didn’t take the turnoff road down to the separate cabins but stayed on the main road to take him directly to the lodge. “I think I see her, Mrs. K.”
Up ahead, he spotted a dark green coat and blue knit hat in the blaze of white lights decorating the front of the inn. Heather sat on her small rolling suitcase a few feet from the curb as if waiting for a ride.
“Don’t you let her leave, Jared,” Mrs. Krause counseled while a small group of voices broke out into carols in the background.
“Not a chance.” He disconnected the call, determination firing through him as he rounded a corner past some lighted Christmas trees.
Heather stood, apparently spotting his truck barreling toward the inn. He didn’t bother to park in the lot, pulling up beside her and turning off the engine. He shoved open the door and walked around the vehicle, facing her.