Kyle must have been reading her mind, because he murmured in her ear, “Stay. All weekend.”
“I don’t have any of my stuff,” she said lamely as reality nosed its way into the perfect moment.
“Go get a bag and come back.”
It was a reasonable suggestion. But then what? Were they jumping back into their relationship as if nothing had happened and ten years hadn’t passed? As if they’d dealt with the hurt and separation?
That was too much reality. She sat up and his arms fell away to rest on the comforter.
“I see the wheels turning,” he commented mildly as he pulled a sheet over his lower half in a strange bout of modesty. “This is a beginning, Grace. Let’s see where it takes us. Don’t throw up any more walls.”
She shut her eyes. Romance was great, but there was so much more that she wanted in a relationship. There’d been no declarations of undying love. No marriage proposal. Why did he get a pass that no other man got? She was caught between her inescapable feelings for Kyle and her standards.
And the intense hope that things might be different this time.
How would she ever find out if she left?
“Okay.” She nodded and ignored the hammering of her pulse. “Let’s see where it goes.”
Nine
Kyle waited on Grace to come back by pretending to watch TV.
His body had cooled—on the outside—but the inside was still pretty keyed up. He wasn’t really interested in much of anything other than getting Grace back in his bed, but this time for the whole night.
When the crunch of gravel sounded outside, breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding whooshed out. She’d come back.
He met Grace at the door, opening it wide as she climbed the front porch steps, her hair still mussed from their thorough lovemaking of less than an hour ago. Her face shone in the porch light, so beautiful and fresh, and his chest hitched as he soaked in the sight of her.
“Hey, Grace,” he said, pretty dang happy his voice still worked.
He’d wondered if she might back out, call and say she’d changed her mind. She was still so skittish. She might have let him into her body but he didn’t fool himself for a second that she’d let him into her head, or her heart. It wasn’t the way it had been, when he’d been her hero, her everything. There was distance now that hadn’t been there before and he didn’t like it.
Of course, some of that was his fault. Not much. But a little. He didn’t fully trust her, and while he’d sworn in theory to forget about the past, it was proving more difficult to do in practice than he’d thought it would be, so he didn’t press the issue of the yawning chasm between them.
“Hey.” She had a bag slung over her shoulder and a shy smile on her face.
Shy? After the temptress she’d been? It caught him up short. Maybe some of the distance was due to sheer unfamiliarity between them. As comfortable as he felt around Grace, that didn’t mean she was totally in the groove yet. Plus, they didn’t know each other as well as they used to. Ten years didn’t vanish just because two people slept together.
“We never had dinner,” he commented. “Come sit with me and we’ll eat. For real this time.”
She nodded and let him take her bag, following him to the table where he laid out silverware and refilled their wineglasses. They ate the chicken salad and polished off the bottle of wine, chatting long after clearing their plates. Grace told cute stories about the children on her case docket, and Kyle reciprocated with some carefully selected anecdotes about the guys he’d trained with in Coronado during BUD/S. Carefully selected because that period had been among the toughest of his life as his training honed him into an elite warrior—while he was fighting his own internal battle against the hurt this woman had caused. But he’d survived and wasn’t dwelling on that.
Couldn’t dwell on it. Liam wasn’t a factor and he wanted to do things with Grace differently this time. And by the time Kyle was done with her, she’d be asking, “Liam who?”
A wail over the monitor drew their attention away from their conversation and Grace gladly helped him get the girls settled again. It was nearing midnight; hopefully it would be the only time the babies woke up for the night.
Kyle didn’t mind rolling out of bed at any hour to take care of his daughters, but he selfishly wanted to spend the rest of the night with Grace, and Grace alone. He got his wish. They fell asleep wrapped in each other’s arms, and Kyle slept like the dead until dawn.
His eyes snapped open and he took a half second to orient. Not a SEAL. Not in Afghanistan. But with Grace. A blessing to count, among many.