Treading Water by Marie Force Page B

telling the girls I’m seeing Andi?”
    “ I can’t see any reason to
involve them until you know where it’s going.”
    “ I suppose you’re right.”
Jack didn’t like keeping things from them but didn’t want to upset
them when they were finally getting back to some semblance of
normalcy.
    “ I’m going to head over to
Jamie’s now that you’re home, but we’ll be here this
weekend.”
    “ Thanks, Fran, for
everything. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
    “ Have a great time, and
don’t worry about anything.”
     
    The flight was thirty
minutes late. After waiting ten torturous days, the extra half hour
was unbearable. Jack paced the waiting area at the bottom of the
escalator, keeping an eye on the passengers descending from the
second-floor arrival area. Just when he thought he’d go mad if he
had to wait another second, he caught sight of those curls, those
eyes, that smile. Oh, that smile gets to
me .
    She signaled for him to stay put rather than
fight his way through the crowd. The metaphor wasn’t lost on Jack
as he watched her come toward him, knowing exactly what she could
expect from him—and what she couldn’t. In that moment, he realized
with clarity he couldn’t easily understand or explain—even to
himself—that he loved her. At some point over the last two weeks of
talking to her and sharing confidences he had fallen hard.
    Before he had time to process the startling
discovery, she was standing in front of him, and he couldn’t decide
whether he wanted to hug her or kiss her or maybe both. Reaching
out to frame her face with his hands, he bent his head and brushed
a light kiss over her lips. “I thought you’d never get here.”
    Her eyes flittered shut as she dropped her
bag and stepped into his embrace.
    He held her for a long time, breathing her
in and wanting her more than he’d wanted anything in longer than he
could remember. They held each other for several minutes before he
released her, reached for her bag, and walked with his arm around
her to the parking lot.
    In the car, he turned to her. “I’m so glad
to see you.”
    Her face flushed with a
slight blush that he found charming. “All the way here,” she said,
“I kept thinking, what am I doing ? But I wanted to see you again.
So badly.”
    “ I wanted to see you just
as badly.” He cupped her cheek and brought her close enough to
kiss. Skimming his tongue over her bottom lip, he fought the urge
to devour. “Mmm,” he whispered against her lips, “all I’ve thought
about since that amazing kiss in the office was doing it
again.”
    Her fingers combed through his hair,
encouraging him to take more. “Me, too.”
    He kissed her again, this time holding
nothing back. Her slick lips and teasing tongue made him want her
naked and horizontal under him with a fierce urgency he wouldn’t
have thought himself capable of anymore before he met her.
    Breathing hard, he rested his forehead
against hers and gazed into her soft brown eyes. “I told myself I
wouldn’t do this.”
    “ Kiss me?” she asked with
that teasing smile he so adored. “I would’ve been disappointed if
you hadn’t.”
    “ Jump all over you like a
hormonal teenager the minute you got here.”
    “ We jumped all over each
other.”
    “ I can’t remember the last
time I made out in a parked car,” he said with a smile as he
reluctantly pulled himself away from her to drive them to Newport.
“I’d forgotten how fun it can be.”
    The ride was punctuated by small talk and
comfortable stretches of silence. On the way, Jack struggled to
process the strong reaction he’d had to seeing her again as well as
the discovery that he’d fallen in love with her.
    “ What’re you thinking about
over there?”
    Startled out of his thoughts, Jack glanced
at her. “A lot of things.”
    Reaching over, she linked her fingers with
his. “Care to share any of them?”
    “ Maybe,” he said with a coy
smile. “Eventually.”
    “ Are you