“Me three,” Margot said.
Tears scratched Leigh’s throat as they huddled together. One friend married now. One engaged. One...
Well, one so very glad for the other two.
Another white limo—this one included in the wedding package—pulled up. A driver got out to open the door. The plan was for Dani and Riley to climb in and start on the champagne while Margot drove Leigh in her pickup to Caesars Palace, where they’d managed to book a few rooms, and Clint took care of Riley’s vehicle. They would all meet up at the hotel before hitting the town.
After Dani got into the limo, Riley prepared to do the same, stopping to playfully waggle his eyebrows at Clint. Then he jauntily waved goodbye to Leigh and Margot before he shut the door.
Dani had already popped out of the open sunroof, though, raising her hands in a sign of triumph. “I’m married!”
And the bright smile on her face didn’t lie. She was over the moon, a stronger woman than she’d been a month before, and surprisingly happy about the turn her life had taken. She disappeared back down into the limo, where Riley had no doubt pulled her.
“So what do you think, Shakespeare?” Clint asked Margot, slipping his arm around her waist. “Do you want to move up the honeymoon, too?”
“I’m going to make you wait.” But she kissed him anyway, and they both laughed, their lips still brushing each other’s.
Giddy. So in love. Leigh sighed.
Now that the bride and groom were behind the darkened limo windows, Leigh dropped her mask, wondering if she’d be able to get through the night without breaking down and crying over her champagne.
A car pulled up on the other side of Dani and Riley’s limo, but Leigh barely noticed. “Ready to get going, you two?” she asked the lovebirds.
“Ready,” Margot said.
Just then the wedding limo pulled away, revealing the sleek black sports car behind it.
And the man who’d just stepped out of it.
For the longest moment in recorded history, Leigh stared at him, thinking she was dreaming—that all her longing for love had materialized even before she’d gotten herself nice and drunk.
Adam, with his black hair and golden eyes that yearned for her as he just stood there in his flannel shirt and jeans and boots.
He left his car door open and came toward Leigh. “You’re here.”
Next to her, Margot reached out to grasp Leigh’s coat. She and Clint both went still.
“What’re you doing?” Leigh asked, numb, still not believing that this was happening.
“It’s a long story.”
Getting the hint, Clint dragged Margot away, leaving Leigh with Adam in front of the white wedding tunnel, where the fairy lights seemed as if they were from a whole other world.
Adam nodded to Clint as he left—he’d obviously recognized him from his short time in the fraternity—but his attention returned to Leigh full force.
His voice was gritty when he said, “Beth had told me where you went after you left San Diego. And she said you’d be throwing a party for Dani on Margot and Clint’s ranch this weekend. So I went there. The ranch hand in charge thought I was supposed to be a part of the festivities or something, so he told me where you all had gone, including which chapel you’d be at if I wanted to attend the wedding. So I drove here as fast as I could.”
This was Adam, right? The man who’d always hung back from her? But he’d stepped out of hiding and sought her out this time.
“Why’d you come here?” she asked.
“Because I couldn’t say what I want to say over the damned phone. I wanted it to be face-to-face.”
From Adam straight to Leigh, no go-betweens, no barriers.
Hope was more than a blip now, and it was beeping in her, low and deep. “And what did you want to tell me?”
He looked down, and for a second Leigh thought he’d lost his courage to say what he’d come all these miles to say. But when he glanced back up, she saw the same intensity in his gaze that had been there on the day he’d revealed himself to her.
Was this for real? Somehow she kept thinking that this was just another game. The worst one of all.
“After you were gone,” he said, “I couldn’t stand it. Not having you there took away all the life around me, and that’s when I realized what you’d brought to me. With you, I could laugh again. I could smile and be carefree. There was light when you were around me, and when you left, it left with you.”
Her heart felt as if it were bleeding. He’d come all these miles and put her above everything else to be here?
It’d finally happened to her—someone caring, someone wanting to be with her to such an extent that he’d gone ridiculously out of his way for her. But he’d had so many things holding him back, keeping him from truly giving himself to anyone else....
He must’ve known what she was thinking. “I made my peace with Carla. That’s something you did for me, too, Leigh. You showed me it was okay to move on. All you have to do is believe that I’m more than ready now.”
“Have you really changed?” Because she couldn’t stand if she was wrong, giving everything she had to him and then getting crushed.
“Yes,” he said, smiling at her softly. “I have.”
It was the first time she’d seen a smile like that from Adam, and her heart reached out, beating for him.
He said, “You’re everything I want and need, and I was an absolute mystery to myself until you came along to help me figure things out. Can you believe me?”
She allowed her heart to win, running to him, answering yes with a kiss that could leave no doubts. And she pressed her mouth to his with such passionate pressure that she just about dissolved altogether.
Their first real kiss.
She clung to him, this man who could bring her to intoxicating heights. He explored her in the most desperate of ways, deepening the kiss until she almost fell down.
Whimpering under his mouth, she angled against him, wrapping her arms around his waist, impulsively bringing him closer.
This had to be the kiss of all kisses, with Adam ultimately breaking off to plant more tiny ones on her jaw, her neck, behind her ear. Each of them made delight pop inside of her.
It was only when he paused, his face against her neck, that she opened her eyes and thought, Callum never kissed me.
But Callum was in the past. The future was all Adam, who’d come here and put himself on the line for her.
He pulled back slightly, holding her face in his hands, drinking in the sight of her. “Leigh...I’ve been wanting to do that for so long.”
In a whisper, she asked a question she’d put to him before, but it was under very different circumstances now.
“And what’s next on the agenda?”
Adam smiled, unmasked, his heart in his gaze.
* * *
THEY CHECKED IN to the room Leigh had reserved at Caesars Palace. It had a view of the blue-lit pools, the decor of a Roman getaway and a king-size bed.
That was actually the first thing Adam had noticed upon entering, but he wasn’t about to push Leigh into anything they weren’t ready for.
Yet when she rushed toward him after closing the door, drawing him into another kiss, he lost all sense of propriety.
His head swirled as he tasted her lips, smelled her strawberry-lotion skin, devoured her while hearing her make small sounds of pleasure under his mouth.
Those sounds drove him on as he sipped at her, and he loosened her hair from its ponytail, digging his hands into all that silk, feeling it glide over his fingers.
When he couldn’t catch another breath, he buried his face in her neck. “We could just talk, you know.”
“We’ve got all night to talk.” But her agitated tone made him think th
at she had other things in mind for the night.
Her actions made him think the exact same thing as she all but ripped off her silk blouse, revealing smooth flesh and a demure flower-laced bra.
“Touch me, Adam,” she said, and he realized that this would be their first time face-to-face with their clothes off. Callum had been a fantasy, a prelude to a bigger tune, just like the country-noir music that had been playing when Adam had shown her who he truly was. Now it was time for the rest of the piece.
His body assumed the tempo of an upbeat love song as she took him by the hands, resting his knuckles against her mouth, kissing him.
“There was a time,” she said against him, “when I didn’t know much more about you than your hands and voice. And even though I had no idea who you were, I knew your hands were strong yet gentle at the same time. Just like your words could be.”
And those hands were itching to feel her.
He rested his fingertips on her collarbone, tracing her. He wanted to map every inch of the woman he needed in his life so badly that he’d driven all day without a thought to consequence just to be with her, to tell her as soon as he could that she was his light.
Her chest rose and fell as he swept his fingers down over her breasts. Her nipples were already beaded underneath her bra, which hooked in the front. He undid the clasp, watching as her breasts fell free of the cups.
So pink, so pretty.
His blood thudding like a slowly plucked bass, he backed up, toward the bed, sitting on it. She stood before him now, shrugging off her bra.
“My beautiful Leigh,” he said, leaning forward, brushing his cheek against her, her nipple skimming him.
He leaned to her other breast, kissing it as her hand threaded in his hair, pulling it a little. She was canting toward him, encouraging him, her long hair unbound and curtaining him.
With heartfelt deliberation, he stroked his tongue from the underside of her breast upward, tasting the salt and musk on her skin. He licked again, this time toward her nipple, just grazing the tip of it.
A gasp told him that he’d hit a mark. She was his just as much as he was hers.
He kept lightly teasing her with his tongue until she grasped his hair harder, letting him know that she was ready for more. So he took her into his mouth, sucking at her, bringing her down closer to him until she had one knee on the bed.
“Adam,” she said dreamily. “Adam...”
Coaxing a hand between her thighs, he rubbed her there, through her jeans. Now the rhythm of that bass in him was picking up, strings played with more force, pushing up the tempo of the song in his heart.
“I like hearing you say my name,” he whispered, pressing his fingers upward against her clit.
She gasped and looked into his eyes, and the dark green of them swallowed him up.
“Adam,” she said almost angrily, because he was circling her now, making her move her hips, teasing her.
He laughed, and she did, too. Then he unbuttoned the fly of her jeans and shucked them all the way off, along with her boots and socks. She did the same to him, until they were both bare to each other. He pulled her onto his lap so that she straddled him. Over her shoulder, a mirror reflected her gorgeous back and her shapely ass. His hands traveled over her bottom, coming to cup her. Then, parting her thighs more, urging her even closer to him, he watched in that mirror as he slid two fingers up and into her.
While she moaned, he watched as he worked her in and out, making her move up and down. But when she leaned her head back, coming along for the churning ride, the mirror wasn’t good enough, and he put his hand behind her head, bringing her face-to-face with him.
Delirious desire was building in her gaze, and that fed him, forced the music in him to go a little faster...bam-bam-bam, the bass in his pulse pounding....
He was so hard for her now, his erection echoing the rhythm, that the song was becoming a mess of notes, muddling his mind.
It seemed the most natural thing in the world when he brought her even closer to him, reaching down with his hand to his cock so he could guide it into her as she slid over him.
As he entered her, she made a chest-deep noise, surprised and satisfied at the same time. Her gaze met his, because this was the first time...
The only time he’d fallen for a woman since he’d faded away from life.
But Leigh had brought him back, and she rocked against him, gazing into his eyes the whole time. He didn’t look away—couldn’t look away—as they moved together in a dance far more intimate than the one they’d shared on the San Diego ranch.
Notes, slamming into him...coming faster, shaping themselves into a song he didn’t recognize but, all the same, he swore was familiar. Faster...wilder. The song wasn’t stopping, and neither were they as he pulled Leigh down into a soul-searing kiss, taking as much of her as he could get while she strained, labored, arched up with a cry—
She came, and he wasn’t too far behind her, in the throes of a blinding whirl of sound and fury.
Stronger, faster, until the sounds somehow turned into something he could see, bright and hot, throbbing, blooming and firing into him—
His orgasm consumed him, taking everything he had as he collapsed back onto the bed, bringing Leigh with him, stretched over his humming body. She pushed back his hair, her skin dewy, watching his face, smiling.
“Adam Morgan,” she whispered. “Good to meet you.”
He smiled, too, wrapping her in his arms, knowing just who he was for the first time in too long.
Epilogue
“HIDE YOUR EYES,” Adam said.
As he led Leigh into the stables of his San Diego ranch, she pressed her hands over her eyes, depending on him to guide her inside the building. Adam had promised her surprises, and they’d never stopped coming during the months they’d been together.
“Stop peeking,” he said.
“I’m not.” But she was. She decided to obey him, though, squeezing her fingers tighter to show him she could be trusted.
When she heard the nickers of the horses in the barn, she thought that there were more than usual, and she couldn’t resist a moment longer, removing her hands just as Adam stood in front of her, putting a stop to her progress.
Adam dressed in the cowboy duds he’d been wearing ever since they’d moved onto this property where they’d had so many good times together. Where they’d finally taken off the blinders and found each other.
“You’re making me wait,” she said.
He took her face in his hands, smiling down at her. Her heart zapped around in her chest like a ricocheting bullet.
“Happy four-month anniversary, Leigh,” he said, stepping out of the way.
In a stall, a chestnut quarter horse stood, checking her out with big brown eyes.
Leigh let out a squeal. “You didn’t!”
“I did.” Adam patted the male on the neck, rubbing it. “He goes along with your Bessie Blue. I figured everyone on this place needs some company.”
Next door in her own stall, Bessie presented her head, asking Leigh to rub her neck. Leigh went over to her sweetheart, reassuring her thoroughly before heading to the new boy.
“What’s his name?” she asked Adam.
“I figured I’d leave that up to you.”
“Buddy Blue. It has a nice family ring to it.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Thank you so much for this!” She went into her man’s arms. Not only had he given her Bessie as a gift right after they’d declared their feelings for each other, he’d also converted his home in Cambria into business offices where Beth was now headquartered.
It was time to let go of the past, he’d told her. Time to start a new life with her and her alone.
Number one, Leigh thought, kissing him un
til she couldn’t breathe anymore. She had no doubt she came first with Adam and always would.
Even when their kiss was done, he swooped Leigh up into his arms. “You happy?”
“I am. But you’d better put me down before you strain yourself.”
She was kidding about the few pounds she’d put on after cooking decadent meals for him every week, but his gaze still adored her every time they were together.
The games hadn’t ended with them. Now they were just...safer, Leigh thought. At least as far as their emotions went. They still had their adventures, like the skinny-dipping night in the swimming hole on Clint’s ranch after Dani and Riley had taken their vows in front of their families and friends. Or like the toys they played with every weekend after both of them had gotten all their work done and come home to be together again.
But no matter the game, she had no doubt that he would always reveal himself to her, inside and out. He was her Adam, through and through.
“You’re light as a feather,” he said as he kept lifting her.
She laughed, secure in the fact that he would think she was beautiful even if she gained everything back—which she wouldn’t. But still.
She bent down to kiss him again, and they disengaged only when Bessie and Buddy moved closer, nuzzling each other.
“Fast friends,” Leigh said.
“More than friends. They’ve already taken a shine to each other.”
“Not more than I’ve taken a shine to you.”
He let her slide down the rest of his body—hard muscles, lean length...promises, promises.
She leaned against him, wrapping her arms around his waist, bringing him in even closer. “I met you here, too, in the stables. The real Adam. Did you ever think...?”
“That I was going to fall head over heels for you? Yeah. Because I already had. It just took me a while to realize it.”
“I think I knew that first night. There was something about you that no one else I’d ever met had.”
“Money?”
“No.” She squeezed him.
He caught his breath, laughing. “A sense of mystery?”
Mystery Date Page 18
