Page 106 of These Summer Storms

He nodded. “You understand.”

“Was it sudden? Was it like—”

“He was sick,” he said, clipped, like he regretted bringing it up, but now the words were coming and he couldn’t stop them. “I wasn’t there. For a lot of reasons—he wasn’t the best man. He tried, but he brought a lot of pain to the people around him. And I was young and angry, and he was all I had. It was easy to disappear, and honestly?” He ran a hand through his hair, disturbing the dark waves. “I wanted to disappear. It wasn’t hard for me to leave, but it was too hard for me to go back.”

She nodded. “I understand that, too.”

He met her eyes. “I think you do. But if I learned anything from that, it’s that this day—the days to come—they aren’t for him. They’re for you. Today is an end, but it’s also a beginning. Who were you before, and who will you be after?”

She lifted a hand, not knowing if she should touch him. If this kind of connection was allowed. For all the ways they’d touched, all the things they’d done with and to each other, this was somehow more intimate. “Considering how close you were to my father…this must be difficult.”

He gave her one of those fleeting half smiles that she was beginningto like. “Careful. Things like that will make me start to think you likeme.”

She was starting to think it, too, but she wasn’t ready to admit it. She dropped her hand. “On the boat,” she said. “You told me you were sorry for my loss.”

He nodded. “I am.”

“You shouldn’t be. I lost him a long time before that.”

“I’m sorry for that loss, too,” he said. “That’s the one that doesn’t go away.”

Alice’s chest went tight, suddenly full of truth, and strange relief—that someone understood. Maybe it was the relief that made her say, “And then I lost the rest of them.”

“Are you sure?” He was so close, and she was aching for something that wasn’t the rawness of the day. The unease of the week. The uncertainty of what was to come. And this man, so steady he unmoored her, leaving her whispering his name, barely there, almost lost in the heat of the solarium. In the stillness of the moment, stolen from the chaos of the day.

He heard it.

“Alice, I’m coming for you.” A warning. A promise. “This time, I’m not stopping.”

She lifted her chin as his fingers grazed the side of her neck, setting her pulse pounding. “Please.”

A dark rumble came from deep in his chest. Approval. “That’s so pretty.”

The words tumbled through her, and she closed her eyes as his fingers stroked over her jaw. “What is?”

“Knowing you want it like I do.” His touch left fire in its wake, back down the column of her neck, finding purchase. He pulled her close. “I’ll give it to you,” he whispered, tilting her face up to his, lowering his lips until they were a hairsbreadth from her, the scent of him enveloping her—sand and salt and sea. “Just a little. Just for a second. And then we’ll stop.”

“Just for a second,” she agreed. “Just a tiny bit, and then we’ll—”

He swallowed the rest with his kiss.

They’d kissed before, obviously. Hot, wild kissing that felt fierce and desperate and explosive, like they were racing against some unseen rival for pleasure. The kind of kissing that made you forget.

But this…this was for remembering. This was for holding close for a lifetime, for hiding away for late nights and long afternoons when there was time to relive it. That time he’d found her in pieces no one else could see, and honored her. This was for exploring in secret, again and again, just as they explored each other now, slow and sinful and perfect.

And it was an exploration, his tongue stroking over her lips as she sighed into his mouth, opening for him, pressing herself to him—somehow hotter than the room itself as his hands came to her face, holding her with steady certainty, like he had plans for her. She couldn’t resist touching him in response, her hands sliding beneath his open jacket, chasing up the ridges of the torso she knew was kissed by the sun.

He grunted at her touch, and she loved that sound, the proof that he was as beholden to the moment as she was, their kiss stopping time with its slow, sinful movements, firm and impossibly soft, setting fire to them both when his thumbs stroked over her skin and he tasted her, savored her.

When he finally stopped it, lifting his lips, making her want to fist his lapels and pull him back for more, Jack stared down at Alice like he was admiring his work, memorizing it.

Memorizing her.

Jack whispered something, too soft for her to hear, and then said, “This isn’t the right place for this.”

He was wrong. Alice honestly couldn’t think of a better place—an unused solarium hotter than the sun and full of dirt and growing things. It was perfect, and if he would just kiss her again, she’d prove it.

In fact…