Never Been Kissed

by Linda Turner

  He’d felt robbed, cheated, and he’d driven away from the cemetery that day convinced that his life was over. Oh, he hadn’t died like Victoria had, but he might just as well have. She’d taken his heart with her when she’d died—and his reason for living. All he’d wanted to do was go somewhere and die so they could be together again. He’d stopped caring about life, himself, his patients. If it hadn’t been for Tony urging him to get out of L.A., he didn’t doubt that he’d be in serious trouble by now.

  He owed Tony more than he could possibly know. He was the one who’d told him about Dan needing a partner to eventually take over his practice. Because of Tony, he’d come to Liberty Hill—and started to live again.

  “Tony put me on the right path,” he told Victoria’s picture. “But it was Janey who saved me, Vic. She pushed her way into my life even when I didn’t want her to and made me like her. Then she turned right around and made me love her.”

  That didn’t mean he didn’t still love Victoria. She was his first love and had carved her own special place in his heart. But he couldn’t keep looking over his shoulder and clinging to what might have been. Life was in front of him, not behind him, and he wanted to share it with Janey.

  Which meant he had to let Victoria go.

  There was a time in the not too distant past when he would have thought he’d never be able to do such a thing without ripping his heart out. But Sara McBride had been right. Victoria would never have wanted him to be alone when there was someone out there he could love. She would want him to be happy, and he knew he would be with Janey. She was everything he wanted and more.

  The decision made, he strode over to the desk in the corner and placed Victoria’s picture in the bottom drawer, which he seldom used. He wouldn’t, he knew, look at her picture again for a long time. And that was all right. Because he didn’t need her picture anymore to remind him of her and the love they had shared.

  Caught up in making sure Merry and the baby were okay, Janey didn’t notice that Reilly had left until her mother suggested they let Merry rest and all go to Ed’s to continue the celebration. She glanced around, intending to make sure Reilly knew he was included, only to discover that he was gone.

  “Where’s Reilly?”

  In the process of helping Sara on with her coat, Dan said, “Oh, he left a little while ago. I tried to get him to stay, but he said he had something he had to do at home.”

  Disappointed—and concerned that he may have somehow felt awkward staying to celebrate when he was the only one there who wasn’t a part of the family—she frowned. “Maybe he felt like he was intruding. I think I’ll run by his place and talk to him before I go to Ed’s.”

  “All right, dear,” her mother said with a smile. “I’m sure we’ll be there a while, so take your time.” Still walking on air from everything that had happened that day, she gave Merry, Nick and the baby each a kiss, then sailed out with her hand in Dan’s, beaming like a new bride.

  Following the rest of the family out the door, Janey couldn’t have been happier for her mother. After all the years she’d been alone, she deserved this time with Dan and the joy the two of them had found together. She just wished she could find the same thing for herself—with Reilly.

  She was, however, afraid to hope. She knew how he felt about Victoria, knew that he never planned to love another woman, and she didn’t know how to get past that. How could she hope to compete with a memory? Should she even try? Even as she asked the question, she knew she had to.

  The evening had been an emotional one, and more than once she’d found herself blinking back tears. She told herself it was because she was so happy for her mother and Merry, and that was the truth. But part of her felt as if she was standing on the outside looking in while everyone else found happiness, and that hurt. She’d done that all of her life, but no more. She wanted love and marriage and happily-ever-after, and she wanted it with Reilly. Whether he wanted it with her was still to be determined, but she had to try.

  The lights shining in his windows called to her, and she headed straight for the cabin. Later, she never remembered parking next to his BMW, but thirty seconds later she found herself on the porch at his front door. Feeling as if she was standing on the edge of a precipice and one wrong step could be her last, she drew in a long breath to try to calm her suddenly pounding heart, then knocked on the door.

  She was the last person he expected to find on his doorstep. “Janey!” Surprised, he pulled the door wider, a pleased smile spreading across his face. “What are you doing here? I thought you’d be celebrating with the family at Ed’s.”

  “I might drop by there later.” Stepping inside, she started to ask if he was busy, only to just then notice the way the furniture was haphazardly scattered around the living room. “What’s going on?”

  Caught in the act of rearranging his life, he shrugged sheepishly. “I know this will probably seem crazy to you, but I just realized that when I moved in, I arranged the furniture exactly the same here as it was in my house in L.A. So I decided to rearrange it.”

  “At nine o’clock at night?”

  “It seemed as good a time as any,” he replied, chuckling. “Want to help?”

  The offer wasn’t the least bit romantic, but it made her heart sing. Happiness spreading through her like liquid sunshine, she grinned and reached for the buttons of her coat. “Sure.”

  Janey thought they were just rearranging the living room, but over the course of the next hour, they moved every stick of furniture in the cabin at least once. After the long day of work they’d had, they both should have been ex hausted, but something about the process of finding just the right spot for the couch and the entertainment center and all the assorted tables and lamps and whatnots that made a house a home turned out to be more fun than either of them expected.

  Laughing and talking as if they hadn’t seen each other in a month of Sundays, they moved the couch twice before they realized they had it and all the furniture arranged exactly the way they both liked it. Chuckling, they sank down onto the sofa with just a cushion between them, stretched their feet out to the fire crackling in the fireplace, and kept right on talking.

  “So how does it feel to be an aunt again?” he asked with a smile as he half turned to face her and propped his arm on the back of the couch behind her. “Is it different when your sister is the mother than your sister-in-law?”

  A smile playing with the corners of her mouth, she nodded. “I didn’t think it would be, but yeah, it is. Not that I’m not crazy about Emma and Cassie,” she quickly assured him. “They’re both adorable. But Merry’s my sister. Watching her have the baby, I could almost imagine—”

  When she hesitated, suddenly realizing what she was about to admit, he finished for her softly, “What it must be like to have one of your own? That’s what you were thinking, wasn’t it?”

  Swallowing the sudden lump of emotion in her throat, she nodded. “You don’t let yourself dream of something you can never have. It hurts too much.”

  “I felt that way when Victoria died,” he said huskily, understanding perfectly. “We’d put off having children because we thought we had plenty of time. We didn’t.”

  It was a night for confidences, for sharing, and with no conscious decision on his part, he told her about Victoria. “I know it sounds crazy, but I fell in love with her on our first date and never looked at another woman after that. She was all I ever wanted. Then she died, and I wanted to, too. Because I was the one who was driving that night.”

  He’d never told anyone that but the police and his immediate family, and he wasn’t sure how she’d take it. After all, there hadn’t been a day that had gone by over the course of the past year that he hadn’t thought about the accident and found a way to blame himself. He wouldn’t blame her if she did, too.

  He should have known, however, she would never be that coldhearted. Her eyes filling with tears, she reached across the cushion that separated them to take his hand. “
Oh, Reilly, it must have been awful for you. I’m so sorry.”

  “A drunk hit us,” he told her, tightening his fingers around hers. “All the eyewitnesses said there was nothing I could have done differently, but that didn’t make me feel any better. I kept thinking if we’d have left the party earlier or if I’d taken another route home, everything would have been different.”

  He sounded so tortured that Janey couldn’t help but ache for him. No wonder he’d been so miserable when he’d first moved to town. He’d carried all that guilt around and he hadn’t told a soul.

  “Don’t,” she murmured. “I know how much you loved her, but you’ve worked in medicine long enough to know that even when you do everything right, it doesn’t matter sometimes. The patient still dies. Because it’s their time to go, and we have no control over that. Only God does. You could have gone miles out of your way, stopped at every intersection to make sure it was absolutely clear, and Victoria would have still died that night because it was her time to go. Nothing you could have done would have changed that.”

  He wanted to believe her—she could see it in his eyes—and all she could think of was consoling him. Impulsively, she lifted her hand to his cheek and cradled his face in her palm. “Don’t beat yourself up over this. You’re a good man and you did the best you could. That’s all anyone can do.”

  She hadn’t meant to kiss him. She’d have sworn the thought was nowhere in her head. But he looked so sad that it just seemed the thing to do. His name a quiet murmur on her tongue, she leaned closer, eliminating the distance between them, and kissed him softly on the mouth.

  It was just a featherlight kiss, a brush of her lips against his, a whisper of comfort that was over almost before it had begun. But with that simple, innocent kiss, the mood changed like shadows shifting in the night. One second they were talking about Victoria, and the next, something warmed and darkened in his eyes. Suddenly her heart was knocking against her ribs, and she couldn’t look away.

  “I didn’t think I could love again,” he said huskily. “Then I fell in love with you.”

  He said the words so simply, so easily, as if he himself was still amazed by his feelings for her, that she didn’t know if she wanted to laugh or cry. In the end, she did both. “Oh, Reilly, I love you, too! So much it scares me sometimes. I wanted to tell you, but I just couldn’t. I knew how you felt about Victoria—”

  “She’ll always have a special place in my heart,” he admitted soberly, drawing her into his arms. “But she’s gone and I can’t live in the past anymore. Not when I have you.”

  He kissed her then because he’d been aching to all evening, because he couldn’t resist the touch and taste and feel of her in his arms. She loved him! The wonder of that raced through him like a comet, destroying the last tiny dregs of darkness that clung to his soul, and with a murmur of need he wrapped her close and kissed her again as if he would never let her go.

  “I love you,” he rasped. “Let me show you.”

  She knew what he was asking and could no more have resisted him than she could have resisted the longing that welled in her heart like a spring that went soul deep. Without even knowing it, she’d been waiting for this moment from the second they’d first met. With a murmur of need, she kissed him back with all her heart.

  Blindly reaching behind her for the lamp on the end table next to the couch, he found the switch and turned out the light. Darkness, warm and intimate and warmed by the fire that burned in the fireplace, engulfed them. Kissing her hungrily, Reilly groaned. “Do you have any idea how pretty you are? Tonight, when the baby was born and you looked up at me with tears in your eyes, I just wanted to grab you and kiss you.”

  She wanted to tell him he’d just been caught up in the emotions of delivering the baby, as had she, and firelight made everyone pretty. But she couldn’t form the words. With just his touch alone, he made her feel as if she was the most beautiful woman in the world. He trailed a finger down the side of her neck, and she just seemed to go boneless. Gasping softly, she melted against him, only to moan as his mouth slowly followed the path his fingers had taken. “Reilly!”

  “That’s it, sweetheart,” he murmured. “Just relax and let me lead the way. Just like I did when I taught you how to kiss.”

  Her senses swimming, she couldn’t do anything else. How could she have known she was so sensitive? Everywhere he touched, he kissed, her nerve endings tingled. Then, just when she thought it couldn’t get any better, he reached for the buttons of her blouse with fingers that weren’t quite steady.

  Her eyes wide, she looked up at him in amazement. “You’re shaking!”

  A half smile turning up one corner of his mouth, he didn’t try to deny it. “I love you,” he said gruffly. “I want this to be perfect for you.”

  He couldn’t have said anything that would have made her love him more. Touched, tears spilling over her lashes, she covered his hand with hers and pressed it to her pounding heart. “With you, it can’t be anything else. I love you so much. Love me, Reilly. Please.”

  Just that easily, she humbled him. How could he have been so blessed to fall in love with such an incredible woman? She was so special, and suddenly nothing was more important than showing her that. His nerves settling, he pushed her blouse from her shoulders with hands that were now steady and kissed his way down her throat to the curve of her breast.

  When she gasped softly, he had to smile. “It gets better,” he promised, and went about showing her how.

  The fire burned low in the grate and the shadows grew longer, but neither of them noticed. Clothes melted away, and with soft whispers and even softer touches, they stroked and caressed and learned what made each other sigh. And then they made each other groan.

  Janey was a nurse; it was her job to know the physiology of the human body. She knew the function of every organ, nerve, and muscle, but no amount of medical knowledge could have prepared her for the reaction of her own body to the lovemaking of the man she loved. Her breath hitched in her throat, her thoughts blurred, and all she could think of was how much he made her ache. And she didn’t have a clue what to do about it.

  “Reilly!”

  A sob shuddering through her as he moved over her, she clutched at him, suddenly more unsure than she’d ever been in her life, but he was there for her, loving her, encouraging her every step of the way. “Easy, honey. Yes, that’s right. Oh, Janey…sweetheart…”

  At that moment she’d have walked over hot coals for him if he’d have asked. She moved with him, under him, in a dance as old as time, and couldn’t have said when she learned the steps. Her blood hot and her body humming, all she knew was that she never wanted the loving to stop. Then he slowly, carefully, eased into her with a tenderness that brought tears to her eyes, and her life was irrevocably changed forever.

  “I love you, I love you, I love you.” She didn’t remember saying the words, but they were like a song in her heart she couldn’t stop singing. She should have felt pain from the loss of her virginity, but her every thought began and ended with him—in her, surrounding her, consuming her. She wanted to laugh with the glory of it—and cry from the beauty of it. She’d never felt more loved.

  And when need curled tight in her belly and she found herself racing toward the stars in a dizzy rush, it was his name that she cried out in surprise. “Reilly!”

  One step behind her, the pleasure more intense than anything he’d ever known before, he rasped, “That’s it, sweetheart! Yes! Oh, Janey!”

  A groan ripping from his throat, that was all he could manage. Then, before either of them could do anything more than gasp, the stars exploded around them. Spent, they collapsed in each other’s arms, their hearts still pounding, sated with a pleasure that neither of them had ever dreamed existed.

  Later Reilly couldn’t have said how long they lay there, content to never move again. The fire was nothing but embers that gave off a weak warmth, but still, he couldn’t let her go. Not yet. Not ever.

/>   “Marry me.”

  He hadn’t meant to say the words just then, but they popped out before he even knew they were hovering on his tongue. And nothing, he realized, had ever sounded so right.

  When she drew back in surprise so she could see his face, he smiled down at her with his heart in his eyes. “I know what you’re thinking. People are going to say that it’s too soon or that you need to date other men before you can make a decision like that so you’ll know what you want. And maybe they’re right. But I know how quickly life can change. You can lose the most precious thing in the world to you in the blink of an eye, and I don’t want to lose you.

  “I love you,” he said huskily, cupping her face in his hands. “I want to marry you and have babies with you and grow old with you. If that’s what you want, too, say yes, honey. Just yes.”

  Another woman might have needed more time. And if she’d have asked for it, she knew he would have given it to her. But she didn’t need more time or to date other men to know in her heart what she wanted. Somehow, without even realizing it, she’d known in her heart that one day he would be there for her. She’d waited thirty-seven years. That was long enough.

  Tears glistening in her eyes, happiness setting her aglow, she leaned forward to kiss him and answered the question she’d never expected to hear from any man and he’d never expected to ask. “Yes.”

  Just that easily, they gave each other their hearts.

  Epilogue

  The church looked like something out of a dream. Red and white poinsettias were everywhere, along with hundreds of white candles that set the air itself glistening with hope and expectation. And everywhere Reilly looked, he saw people smiling.

  When he’d told Janey he didn’t want to wait to start their life together, he’d been afraid she would want to take months to plan an elaborate wedding. If that’s what she’d wanted, he would have seen that she got her heart’s desire, but she’d been just as anxious as he to get married. So with her mother and sister’s advice and help, she’d hastily arranged a wedding for New Year’s Eve. Next week Sara and Dan were getting married themselves, but tonight was his and Janey’s and one they would never forget.