Page 143 of Dying to Meet You

“All right,” Natalie agrees. Then a yawn practically cracks her jaw in half.

“We’ll try to sleep,” her mother announces. “If I look at that list anymore, my eyes will cross.” She starts gathering her papers into a pile.

“Night.” Natalie gets up off the couch and heads for the stairs. At the top, she looks back down at her mom, who’s bent over, trying to scoop sticky notes off the floor.

Her dad is helping, a fond expression on his face.

But her mother doesn’t even seem to notice.

51

Rowan

“I’m going to drag that futon mattress out here,” Harrison says as he hands me the last of my printouts. “I’ll sleep right in front of the stairs.”

I want to tell him that’s not necessary. And that playing the role of a martyr won’t get him back into my good graces. Except I don’t think I could deliver that speech convincingly when I’m scared out of my mind.

Should I have taken Natalie to my father’s house tonight? Or even out of town?

“Ro,” he whispers. “Are you okay?”

I’m so tired, but I refuse to cry on him again. “I’m fine,” I murmur. “I’m sorry about earlier. That was stupid.”

“Stupid?” He takes one of my hands in his and begins massaging it, pinching the flesh between each of my fingers in turn. He used to do this when my hand cramped from drafting. I’d forgotten. “Stupid is a strong word.”

“Impulsive, then. I wasn’t thinking,” I whisper.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

He trades hands, massaging the other one as thoroughly as the first. Then he lifts my hand to his mouth and kisses it softly, his beard tickling my palm.

“Harrison...” If our daughter decides to come downstairs, she’ll get the wrong idea. “Not here.”

“All right.” He stands and tugs me off the couch.

It takes my sluggish brain a moment to realize he’s pulling me into the den and closing the door. “What are... ?”

“You said not here, so we’re somewhere else.”

My back hits the door, and he steps into my personal space, gray eyesblazing. He runs one rough thumb over my cheekbone and then tilts his head to kiss me.

It’s not a polite kiss. It’s the stuff of my passionate, twenty-year-old daydreams. All tongue and hands and hunger.

I take two seconds to wonder if I’m making yet another mistake as my hands grip his T-shirt for the second time today. But Harrison’s kisses are still capable of making me forget myself. As one of his hands tangles in my hair and the other makes a naughty trip down the back of my sweatpants, the only thing on my mind is a fervent wish that he’d yank off my bra and suck on my nipples until the point of pain.

Then he scoops me up off the floor with one clever arm and pins me against the door, and I wrap my legs around his hips. My kisses are urgent, because I know I can’t stop and think. That way lies the abyss.

Harrison doesn’t give me a chance to reconsider, either. He rocks his hips forward, showing me exactly how much he wants this.

Until he gets carried away and bangs my ass against the old door. Loudly. And Lickie, on the other side, chooses this of all moments to bark out a warning.

We both freeze, mid-kiss, instantly transformed back into exactly who we really are—two strangers, old enough to know better, in a compromised position. In the midst of a crisis, too, in a house where the dog’s bark at zero dark thirty is enough to bring our nervous teenager out of her bedroom.

“Mom?” comes Natalie’s distant shout. “Why is Lickie barking?”

Harrison quickly releases me, and my feet connect with the chilly floor. He opens the door a crack and calls out, “I’m moving the futon around, and I bumped the door. Go to bed, hon.”

“Is Mom coming up?”