He got out of the truck, came around to her side, then opened the door for her.
As he stood there, with the warm inland wind tousling his dark hair, Juliana’s limbs went light. He made her feel weak, but a good kind of weak.
He held out his hand to her, just as he’d done that day in front of the love hotel, inviting her over a different, even scarier threshold.
But this time, when she inhaled as she took hold of him, it wasn’t because she was going against her family.
It was because she knew he would leave her breathless and she was preparing herself.
And—boom!—his fingers really did send shock waves through her as he helped her out of the truck, catching her and swinging her around, then bringing her up against his broad chest.
She buried her face in his neck, inhaling the scent of him—bay leaves, earthy, heady…
Oh, man.
Holding her, he walked her to his cabin, carrying her up the stairs as if she weighed close to nothing.
When they got to his door, he stopped, and she noticed how their hearts tagged each other beat by beat through their chests.
He was inside her again, she thought. Just in a different way now. A way that had nothing to do with sex.
Tristan used his fingers to push the hair back from her face, and the way he looked at her melted her from head to toe.
Then he opened his door, letting Juliana in and setting her on her feet.
The cabin’s main room was as masculine as he was: shutters instead of curtains, flannel blankets tossed over the back of a pine futon, fishing gear in one corner and parts of an engine strewn over a table in another.
The personal details brought back something she’d said just before they’d left Japan—that even though they’d been intimate, she still didn’t know much about him at all.
She wandered over to a window that enclosed a view of the sun-washed mountains in the near distance.
Heck, she didn’t know why she’d gone across the room when she could be in his arms. It’d been so easy to go to him in the community center.
But now?
Now came the hard part. The reality.
Just say something, she told herself.
“I don’t have this sort of grand view at my apartment.” Juliana didn’t live on the main Thomsen property, with its batch of cottages. No, her place was a stucco-and-wood two-story box. It was close enough to the others that her family often dropped by, but far enough to maintain an illusion of space.
“It’s something to wake up to every morning,” he said, sounding just as awkward as she felt now that they’d made their stand.
Because what would come next? Would all their fears be realized about their families?
“Do you work out of this garage on your property, too?” she asked, motioning toward the building to the side of this one. Babbling. She was so babbling. “Or do you do your heavy work in your business garage in town?”
“I keep my pet projects here. Vintage finds. Things I don’t want anyone else to get their hands on.”
This. Was. Maddening.
And getting them nowhere.
She braced herself, turned her face away from the view, but didn’t quite look at him yet. “You can ask it if you want to, Tristan.”
“Ask what?”
Nerves. “How I came to change my mind and rescue you from that party.”
He chuckled, and the sound winged over her skin.
“I hadn’t even wondered,” he said. “The second I saw you, I couldn’t think of anything else.”
She was going to melt away to nothing here.
Finally, Juliana turned all the way around to find him leaning against the wall, a small, content smile on his mouth. It was as if he were taking in the fact that she was here in his cabin, of all places, and he was just glad she’d finally made it.
A thrill spun around her chest. She was glad she’d made it, too.
“I knew my family was up to something,” she said. “When I verified they were planning to crash the Cole celebration, I decided to make the most of it. I tagged along, except not for the reason they expected.”
“And what made you do it, Juliana?”
She paused, her throat getting that searing, croaky feel to it. But she spoke around the ache.
“‘As you get older,’” she said, “‘you’ll discover that the only things you regret are the things you didn’t do.’”
He lifted his brows and his smile stretched even wider, as if he’d never met a woman who could quote—or at least paraphrase—Mark Twain right back at him.
“I missed the hell out of you,” she added. “Couldn’t sleep well. Couldn’t eat much.” She swallowed, and it burned. “There’s no way I could go back to the way life was before. I’d tried it once, and I couldn’t fake my way through the regret again.”
At her confession, he gravitated toward her, and her pulse fluttered.
“If you hadn’t shown up at the community center,” he said, “I would’ve caught up to you somewhere else.”
Unable to stand another minute across the room from him, she moved away from the window.
They met in the middle, where she could feel the heat coming off his flesh, could see pale flecks in his gray eyes.
Her heartbeat stomped in her temples, echoing in her chest. He excited her, and not just physically. Life became a dance of possibilities when he was around.
Her feelings for him were so intense that she laughed a bit, uncertain of how to react under these new rules.
“You ever get the feeling,” she said, “that we did this in weird order?”
“First the puppy love, then the love hotel, then the love itself?”
The last word shot through the atmosphere, rattling into her.
Love.
She looked deeper into his eyes. It had only grown over time, from a fantasy into something they could both accept into their lives, shaping it in any way they wanted to.
He stroked her cheek, and she leaned into his caress.
Unable to resist a last tease, she gestured toward his fishing stuff in the corner. “Just so you know, I don’t like getting up at ungodly hours to dangle hooks in a lake.”
“So we’ll pursue different hobbies. It’ll make for great evening conversation on the porch at sunset.”
“And I can’t even tell you the difference between a Ford and a Dodge.”
“Then I’ll teach you if you want to know.”
She smiled, but now it had nothing to do with teasing him. “I suspect there’s a lot we could teach each other.”
“I’m always a willing student.”
“So I hear.”
They drew closer, coming in for a kiss. Her lips tingled with the anticipation of it.
But then he paused, a tingle away.
“You hear that?” he whispered.
And she did. Bells pealing, choruses caroling.
The sound of cars outside ruining it all.
He kissed her anyway, letting her know that nothing was going to stop them.
Not even the Coles versus the Thomsens.
PRESSING HIS MOUTH TO HERS—so warm, so moist—he felt like the luckiest damned guy in the world.
She wanted to grow with him, to stay with him.
He sipped at her lower lip, pulling at it as he disengaged; it slid out of his mouth, sinuously, lazily.
Then he softly kissed her one more time, holding her face in his hands as he kept his mouth lightly on hers.
“Ready?” he asked, the sounds of slamming doors just outside.
She smiled, her soft lips curving under his. “Let’s do it.”
He traced his fingers over her cheek before they both aimed for the door, hand-in-hand.
When he opened it to exit onto the porch, seven members of the warring families were already out of their cars, standing behind their vehicles as if using them as barricades.
On one side—Juliana’s aunt Katrina and two uncles.
&
nbsp; On the other—Tristan’s mom helping Gramps to a stand while a couple of cousins backed them up.
Tristan squeezed Juliana’s hand. “You knew you’d find us here,” he said to the small crowd. “Too predictable, huh? And where are the rest of you?”
Before anyone else could talk, his mom shot him a glance of apology. “Someone called the sheriff back at the community center, and everyone—including Chad—stayed behind to help calm the situation.”
Gramps clearly was beyond all that. In fact, Tristan could barely stand to look at him, because the older man seemed as if his heart was breaking.
“What’s going on, Tristan, son?” he asked softly, leaning against the 1957 Ford Fairlaine Tristan had once restored for him.
The car seemed to be the only thing keeping him up, and for a moment, Tristan almost went to him.
But he knew that he needed to stay up here, with Juliana.
Luckily, his mom supported Gramps, and Tristan looked at her in thanks. She watched him, and he thought that, maybe, she was trying to share as much strength with her son as she had already given the older man.
“I’m in love with Juliana, Gramps,” he said, simply, directly, but, in a way, it felt like a shout. A big, wonderful, uncontained shout. “I have been for a long time, and when we ran into each other over in Japan, we couldn’t deny it anymore.”
Gramps kept looking at Tristan. What was he thinking? Why wasn’t he saying anything?
Then Juliana’s aunt Katrina, a woman with sprightly, flyaway gray hair and a stout figure covered by a sunflower-print dress, spoke up.
“Juliana,” she said in a voice that sounded sweet, patient and schoolmatronly. “Is this why that family ended up with the painting?”
Juliana’s hand tightened in his.
“Aunt Katrina,” she said, “I hope you’re not insinuating that I purposely let Tristan outbid me.”
Her aunt sighed, resting a hand on her chest, closing her eyes as if she were having an anxiety attack.
This time, Tristan did start forward, fearing for the woman.
But then one of the uncles—Gary—touched her shoulder and shook his head, as if saying, Now’s not the time.
An ally?
Vaguely, Tristan remembered how, once, there’d been talk of one of his aunts and Gary Thomsen, but nothing had come of it. Just rumors that had disappeared with the next juicy story in town.
Now he wondered if Gary and Aunt Joan had been cowed by the feud.
Wondered how many people had been caught in the middle and been too afraid to step forward.
But he didn’t have much time to think about it before Aunt Katrina removed her hand and blushed, healthy as a horse again.
Caught.
Next to him, Juliana sighed in apparent relief. One of Aunt Katrina’s legendary, convenient anxiety moments. But this was the woman who’d taken in Juliana as a daughter, so he couldn’t fault her for much.
Except for everything they’d all been swept up in over the years.
Juliana was talking now. “Have you all come here because Tristan and I are the new painting now that the old one is out of play? We’re not your reason to renew this feud—history’s going to stop repeating itself right here and now.”
“Juliana,” Aunt Katrina said, shooting a glare to Gramps and his lot. “It’s time to get in the car. He’s a Cole.”
As Gramps stayed quiet, the Cole cousins took affront to that, hurling a few choice accusations in return and starting all mouths to yapping again.
Dammit, these people. They didn’t get it, and it saddened Tristan that maybe they never would.
Juliana’s voice rang out over everyone else’s, and the conviction in her tone went right to the center of him.
“I’m not going anywhere, Aunt Katrina.”
There’d been a time when he’d believed that she would never give in to what was so obviously between them, but here she was, standing up for him.
Tristan Cole.
No one outside the family had ever done that before.
And when she slipped her arm around his waist, he pulled her in close, her sweet scent lulling him. The tempo of his body rhythms picked up as he thought about how they were going to be alone again when this tiff was over.
How they had all the time in the world now that they had nothing to hide anymore.
Now both families were staring at him and Juliana as if they were stubborn kids who were going to learn better.
Sure.
“Over in Japan,” he said, “Juliana and I worked a lot out, and I’m not just talking about personally. For the first time in years for both of our families, we sat down like reasonable people and actually communicated. Oddly enough, it even worked.”
“Quite well,” she repeated, but the subtler meaning was targeted at only him.
He tamed a smile. “We exchanged Emelie’s and Terrence’s writings, too, just to get some perspective.”
Both sides of the family got worked up about that, and the tension thickened again.
“That painting we were all after,” Tristan said, raising his voice, “was about pride, and it’s about time we all let go of it.”
The Cole cousins shook their heads while Gramps remained still.
“Never,” Aunt Katrina echoed.
Juliana took her turn. “Maybe you all should look at what Terrence and Emelie wrote, too, because none of it makes sense unless you see where the other was coming from.” She looked up at Tristan. “They loved each other more than anything, and if they saw how everyone was acting now, generations later, they’d be absolutely sick.”
As the group started to grumble again, Tristan ignored them, instead glancing down at Juliana and losing himself in her gaze—a future of dreamscape colors.
Then he turned toward his grandfather.
“Gramps,” he said, “I love you. But is this how you want people to remember you?”
The older man peered up, and Tristan could’ve sworn he was getting to him.
He addressed the others. “And the same goes for you. Do you want to be a footnote of this feud or is there something more worthwhile you could do with the rest of your lives?”
That stunned them, but the younger feuders started to backtalk Tristan, as if they were defending the feud out of habit.
Suddenly, he could see how the bitterness had survived, how it had turned over from year to year.
Juliana pressed her face against his chest, as if that could make this all go away, and he held her closer.
He could tell that she’d had enough, that they’d done all they could do until they could face their own families in private and try to talk some sense into them.
Standing on her tiptoes, she gave him a tiny kiss on the jaw, then said against his skin, “Be right back.”
It was tough to let her go just when he’d gotten used to holding her, but he did. And as she headed for Aunt Katrina, he realized what she had in mind and, in turn, he went straight for Gramps.
“If you want to continue this skirmish with our visitors,” he said mildly as he reached the hood of the car, feet away from the rest of his family, “I’d be grateful if you’d take it to the main house, not here.”
Gramps was the most stubborn, most old-school man Tristan knew, but when he looked at his grandson, he’d lost all of that.
“Why do I have the feeling that I have no choice, Tristan?” he asked. “That you’re already gone?”
He reached out, put his hand on his gramps’s thin shoulder. It had carried a lot over the years, even Tristan himself, back in the days when his grandfather had been strong enough to give him rides that had made Tristan feel on top of the world.
“Gramps,” he said, “it’s up to you whether I go anywhere.”
Tristan’s mom glanced at her son, her eyes holding a sheen. He knew she was remembering what it felt like to be so in love.
When Gramps didn’t say another word—only opened the car door and wearily sat inside—Tristan’s m
om spoke.
“Your dad would bust his buttons right now,” she whispered, then leaned over to kiss him on the cheek.
She got into the car, too, along with the cousins, who kept giving Tristan dirty looks.
But Gramps?
He gazed out the window at Tristan, even as a cousin pulled the car out and then down the driveway.
By this time, Juliana had persuaded her own relatives to leave, too, and as they motored away, she watched them, her hands on her hips, the ends of her hair stirring in the whipped-up breeze.
Just looking at her, Tristan’s emotions spun into their own dervish, then settled in him—his heart, his life—rearranging everything from the inside out.
“That wasn’t so hard,” he said.
“Aunt Katrina said she’d talk to me over dinner.” She paused. “But I think she knows that she could lose me over this, and she’s just as horrified by that as I am.”
“My gramps got the same message, too. We’ll see what that means now, I guess.”
Juliana started to walk over to him, and his heart picked up speed. “They’ll make the right decision. Won’t they?”
Even though he didn’t have an answer, she nestled her hand in his.
Her touch sent warmth through his fingers, up and over the rest of him, as they walked to the porch then sat in the glider to watch the last of the dust settle back to the ground.
JULIANA CUDDLED against Tristan on the glider. “My aunt Katrina promised they’d go straight home. No more shenanigans with the painting. At least not today.”
“Thank God for that.”
Juliana paused, thoughtful. Like her, Aunt Katrina had always possessed a soft side, stocking the bookstore with the biggest romance section within a fifty-mile radius and reading every novel from cover to cover. With Tristan’s permission, she wanted to show Terrence’s journal pages to her aunt. Maybe it would help.
And maybe not.
They’d just have to see, but whatever their families’ attitudes, it wasn’t going to take Juliana from Tristan’s side ever again.
He laughed, suddenly and deeply.
“What?” she asked.
He pulled her closer. “Just thinking that we made a pretty good team.”
“We did, didn’t we?”
She rubbed her nose against his neck, slid her hand over his stomach. His muscles jerked under her fingertips.
When the Sun Goes Down... Page 16
