Coming In From the Cold(31)

Willow couldn't help it. She smiled. "I don't know what to say. I've  just spent the last three months trying to get over you. What do you  want from me, Dane?"

He put a single finger on the back of her hand, and she felt it like an  electric charge. "You know how some people have a bucket list? They want  to go bungee jumping in New Zealand, or they want to have sex in an  airplane bathroom?"

"Okay … ?"

"Well, my bucket list is ass-backwards. I want to fall asleep on your  sofa in the middle of a movie. I want to bring you a beer during  commercial breaks. I want you to warm up your cold feet with mine."                       
       
           



       

"I can't drink beer, I'm pregnant."

"Would you please come here?" He patted the spot next to him on the sofa.

Her heart skittering, Willow moved over to sit near him, her feet next to his on the coffee table.

Dane slid his arms around her, and she leaned back onto his chest. His  body was sturdy and warm. He kissed the top of her head, and she pulled  his arms tighter around her midriff. "You have no idea," he whispered,  "how happy this makes me. Just this." He gave her a gentle squeeze.

She turned her chin, resting her cheek against his chest.

"The most important thing I want to say to you is this," Dane said, his  voice soft. "Every time I walked away from you-since that very first  morning-it was always because I thought I needed to. I handled  everything very badly, but I only meant to protect us both. It's just  that there wasn't any way to do that."

"I'm starting to understand," Willow said.

They were silent a minute, and then he said, "It's hard for me, Willow.  Even now, I'm trying not to hear a little voice in my head. The one that  says-you'd better get away from that girl, you're toxic." His voice  dropped to a whisper. "Don't you dare love her."

Willow's heart beat double-time. "If you want to have a life, you tell that voice to move on now," she whispered.

"I want to," he said, with a halting breath.

Willow raised her head. His eyes were damp. Without thinking, she  reached up to stroke his cheek with her thumb. "I've been trying to  imagine what it was like for you. To live with the dread of dying  young."

"It's not just dying," he said, his voice wrecked. "It's ugly, Willow. A  nasty wasting away. My father split because he couldn't watch anymore.  So I told myself - don't ever be close to anyone. For years I thought I  was doing okay, living a big life and keeping everything to myself."

"Until I screwed up your strategy."

His arms tightened around her. "You flattened me, Willow. The day I met  you was like doing a face-plant at eighty miles an hour."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm not. I'm wrecked, and I'm rattled. But I'm not sorry." He took a deep breath through his nose.

A silence settled over them both, but it was the good kind. Sitting here  with him was easier than she would have imagined. Outside the wind  howled and the snow fell into the encroaching darkness, obliterating the  footprints they'd made between the barn and the house.

Willow wondered whether the ugly tracks they'd made on each other's hearts could be covered over, too.

"What do you think happens next?" Dane asked in a low voice. "That's a  question I never asked myself before. I was always jealous of people who  had futures. I didn't ever stop to think that having one would be so  complicated."

She stroked his hand where it lay across her stomach. "Just breathe in. Breathe out. Then repeat," she said.

He laughed. "I can try that."

She turned her chin to face him. "So, which movie do you want to fall asleep during first?"

As she watched, a slow smile started on his lips and traveled all the  way to his eyes. Then he put his nose in her hair. "I wouldn't even  care. You could pick."

"You know," she said, "there's a little voice in my head lately, too."

"What does it say?" His dimple appeared.

"It says," she dropped her voice to a whisper, "popcorn with extra  butter." She pushed his hands off her, standing up. She handed him the  remote. "You see what's on."





Twenty-six





They settled on an action flick. But Dane could hardly focus on the  screen. He was too busy inhaling the strawberry scent of her hair and  feeling the warm slant of her back against his chest. When she squeezed  his hand during a particularly tense gunfight, he closed his eyes just  to concentrate on the sensation of her palm against his. Whenever she  shifted against him, his chest expanded with happiness.

The girl felt so good. The nearness of her was like therapy.

"I'm going to be so angry when they kill off that character," she said, pointing at the screen. "The biker dude."

"Hmm?"

"He's going to bite it in the end," she said.

"You've seen this?" he asked.

"No. But that character is a classic overcompensator. He's the sort to take some horrible risk during the final showdown."

He chuckled into her hair. She reached back and swept it over one  shoulder, exposing a creamy stretch of her neck. It was right there,  under his nose. If he stretched forward a mere inch, he could nibble on  it, just a little bit.                       
       
           



       

No way. Don't wreck it.

The plan for tonight was just to be with her. And it was a good plan.  Impulsive sex had caused them plenty of trouble already, and he was  willing to wait. So Dane ignored the swelling in his briefs and leaned  back on the couch. On screen, the hero crept through a darkened parking  garage, a single bullet left in the chamber. From the nearby darkness  came the sound of a gun being cocked, and the hero froze.

At this moment of carefully constructed cinematic tension, Willow  scooted higher up on Dane's chest, her gorgeous neck even closer to his  lips. Dane's dick punched against his pants, and he sent it a silent  warning. Dude, we really aren't going there tonight.

As soon as the action hero pulled off another daring escape, Willow  tipped her head back, then turned her chin, her lips almost touching his  ear. Then she exhaled, and her warm breath took him from merely chubby  to rock hard.

"Willow," he whispered. "You're making it very hard for a guy to focus on the movie."

She turned his hand over in hers and traced his palm with two of her fingers. "Sorry," she said.

Dane took a deep breath and dialed his arousal down a few notches.

"Hmm," Willow mused. "The sidekick just happens to know how to fly a  helicopter? That's convenient." She leaned forward as the copter lifted  off the helipad, and Dane decided it might be possible to focus on the  screen.

And that's when the power went out, plunging the room into blackness.

Uh oh.

For a moment, neither Dane nor Willow said a word. But the absence of  all light and TV noise made it even more obvious to him that his body  was pressed up against Willow's in the pitch dark.

Willow groaned. "Now I won't know how it ends."

She turned toward him, so close that he could feel her breath on his  chin. He felt such a crackle in the air between him that it might have  lit up the room. "I could tell you how it ends," he said.

She reached up and put her hands on his face, which nearly killed him off right there. "Dane, have you seen this movie?"

"I may have."

She was quiet. "Well, spill it already."

"Okay," he said, the heat of her hands seeping into his soul. "The hero  drops from the helicopter onto the moving train and shoots the bad guys.  Then he rescues his family from the container car."

"Hmm," Willow said, so close that the word vibrated off of the corner of  his chin. "That's so predictable. But what about the sidekick?"

By this point, most of the blood in Dane's body had flowed away from his  brain and into his shorts. It was hard to think. "The sidekick dies  from eating a bad egg-salad sandwich. Not Vermont's finest."

She pinched him.

"Ow," he smiled.

"You haven't seen this movie," she challenged.

"Have so. Coach loves this movie. I just don't want you to feel bad about the ending."

"Tell me," she whispered. "I can take it."

He pressed his forehead to hers. "I forgot who I was dealing with."

"The sidekick bites it, doesn't he?"

Dane let himself nuzzle her face with his nose. It was just the lightest  touch-it could barely be said to count against his rule. "Turns out,  the terrorist put the bomb in the helicopter, not the train. So the  sidekick has to drop the chopper into a ravine, blowing himself up, but  saving the city."