She pressed a finger to his lips, stopping him. “Neither do I, Jesse. Everything has happened so fast. There’s still so much to figure out. We’ll take it slow, step by step, and see what happens. We found each other again. You know about your son. I know what happened fourteen years ago when you vanished from my life. It’s a good starting point. Let’s take it slow and see what unfolds.”
“After all these years.” Jesse smiled. “Still the sensible one.”
“Not always.” She leaned in and kissed his lips. He clutched her shoulders, pulling her to him, deepening the kiss until she was dizzy.
When it ended, she dropped her forehead against his chest, missing him already. She inhaled the clean, soap-fresh scent of him, blindly traced his muscles with her fingertips, knowing this would have to last her until the next time they could be together. He kissed her hair, cupped her chin, lifted her face to him, kissed her cheeks, her nose, each eye closed, found her mouth once more and drank of her deeply like a desperate man. When finally he released her, she was trembling. Her emotions were too strong, threatening to embarrass her, and she breathed in deeply, struggling for composure. She looked at the watch on her wrist. “They’ll be boarding.”
He nodded, expelled a sigh. “Yes, I have to go.”
Neither moved. Finally she nudged him and smiled playfully.
He chuckled softly. “Pathetic, aren’t we?”
She stood, forcing herself to be steady, and reached out her hand. “Come on, I’ll walk with you to the security check-in.”
He took her hand and rose to his feet, slinging his travel bag over his shoulder. They stopped a few steps from the metal detectors. He looked at her, his expression cutting through her fragile resolve to be strong, adult and sensible.
“I have to go.” He held her hand, his thumb moving softly against her skin.
“Yes, you do.” Her voice faltered. She gave him a tiny smile. In the long silence that stretched between them, she feared she would begin to cry.
She brought her hand to his face and touched his cheek. “Kiss me quick and then go.”
He kissed her long instead, again and again, soft and tender, fourteen years dissolving into this moment.
It was she who finally broke the embrace, pushing him gently but firmly away. She looked up into his eyes for the last time. “Go.”
He ran his thumb across her lower lip as if to wipe away the taste of him. He turned. She watched him put his bag on the conveyer belt, step through the circle of metal detectors. He did not look back. A few steps and then he was gone.
“Stay,” she whispered.
She was in the parking lot when she heard rapid, running steps behind her. A hand clamped down on her shoulder, startling her, turning her around.
“Jesse? What is it? What’s wrong?”
He was gasping, struggling for breath. “I wanted to do it right this time, Amy. Not make any mistakes. Give us the long, slow courtship we missed. Dinner dates, flowers, weekends away, take the time to get to know each other all over again.” He rubbed his forehead.
Amy waited, too surprised to speak.
“But hell, Amy, I’m afraid if I get on that flight and you walk out this door, I might never see you again.”
She opened her mouth to reassure him that wasn’t going to happen and found she couldn’t. Because it had happened before.
“At eighteen, I believed we had a whole lifetime to be together, that nothing or no one could tear us apart,” Jesse continued. “I know better now. I know if God has blessed me with a second chance with you, I damn well better not turn my back on it. We’ve already lost fourteen years. I don’t want to lose a minute more. I’ve done a lot of thinking the past two days, Amy. What we do with that chance is up to us. What I don’t know is if I’m right or wrong or coming or going.”
He took her hands in his. “All I know is I love you and I believe you love me. The first time I lost you damn near killed me. I’m not taking any chances on losing you a second time.”
He got down on one knee.
“Marry me, Amy.”
She stared down at him, still stunned.
“It doesn’t have to be today or tomorrow or even next week. Or it can be.”
She smiled.
“I know this is all sudden. Hell, sometimes I still feel like I’m swept up in that damn hurricane again that turned everything in its path upside-down and inside-out. I’m not asking you and Ian to pack up and head out to Texas with me tonight. Ian already told me he’s not thrilled with the idea of Texas. I can come here. I’ll go anywhere you and Ian are, Amy, as long as we’re together. I’ll wait until you’re ready and Ian’s ready. You tell me when, but for today, just tell me.” He took a long, deep breath. “Tell me you’ll marry me.”
She knelt down in front of him.
“Yes.”
He stood and drew her up into his embrace, kissing her with passion and promise. She kissed him back, unashamed to cling to him and hold on too tight. He lifted his head to look deeply into her eyes.
“Yes?” he asked.
She laughed as she cupped his face in her hands. “I’ve waited since I was eighteen years old to be your wife, Jesse Boone. I’m not going to say no now.”
They were still laughing, holding hands as they opened the back door and came into the house. The noise brought Peg into the kitchen.
“What in tarnation? Jesse, what are you still doing here?” She eyed the couple. A smile slowly curved her lips.
“We’ll explain in a minute. Where’s Ian?” Jesse crossed the kitchen, pulling Amy with him.
“In his bedroom. Where else? Why?”
“I’ve got a question to ask him,” Jesse told her as he and Amy started down the hall.
Ian’s bedroom door stood open. Jesse knocked lightly on the doorjamb. Ian looked up from the end of the bed where he was playing a handheld video game. “What are you doing here?” he blurted.
Jesse stopped short, for the first time uncertain.
“Did you miss your plane?” Ian eyed his mother’s hand in Jesse’s. “I told you Mom drives like an old lady.”
“I did miss my plane, but it was my fault.” Releasing Amy’s hand, Jesse walked into the bedroom. “I needed to come back here to ask you a question.” He squatted down in front of Ian, his expression solemn as he gazed at his son.
“A question?” Ian warily eyed the man across from him.
Jesse nodded.
The boy shrugged. “Sure, whatever.”
Jesse took a deep breath. “We’ve talked about how I feel about your mother and how she feels about me. I also told you I can’t think of anything that would give me greater happiness than for us to all be together one day. I know that day won’t be tomorrow or next Tuesday or maybe not even until next year, but I’m hoping that day is sooner than later.”
“What’s the question?” Ian demanded.
“When the day does come, I’d like to know you share our decision to become a family. I’d like to ask you if you’d give me permission to marry your mother?”
Ian stared at his father. “Don’t ya think you should ask her first?”
“I did.”
“Oh, yeah?” Ian’s voice turned hostile. “What did she say?”
Amy stepped into the room and sat down beside her son. “I said yes, Ian.”
He tipped his head up to look at her sullenly. “Then what’s everybody asking me for?”
“Because that’s how families work, Ian,” Jesse said. “They don’t make decisions that will affect all the other members without talking to them about it.”
“We’re not your family,” Ian shot back.
“You’re my son. My blood.”
“That doesn’t make you a father.”
“Ian—” Amy interrupted, but Jesse held up a palm to stop her.
“No, but I want to be your father. And I want to marry your mother. More than anything in the world, I want us to be a family.”
“You guys are
going to do what you want anyway,” Ian grumbled. “It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Your mother and I wouldn’t deliberately do anything to make you unhappy.”
“What about Texas?” Ian demanded.
“I told your mother if you and she didn’t want to leave California, I would come here.”
Ian eyes him suspiciously. “You’re just saying that.”
“I know you don’t know me very well, Ian, but when you do, you’ll know I don’t say things I don’t mean.”
“There’s a terrible need for medical services where Jesse lives, Ian. You and I have often discussed the possibility that once I finish my residency, I might go to work somewhere else besides Courage Bay.”
“We haven’t made any definite decisions yet, Ian,” Jesse said, “except for the fact your mother and I would like us all to be together and want to find a way to make that work so everybody is happy.”
Ian looked down at the small screen of his video game but didn’t turn it on. He sighed. Jesse glanced at Amy. They waited. Ian sighed again.
“You don’t have to give us an answer right now, Ian,” Jesse told him. He glanced again at Amy for approval. She gave a slight nod. “Take some time to think about it. Like I said, everything has happened so fast, your mother and I aren’t going to do anything right away either. We just wanted you to know what we hope will happen in the future. So—” Jesse stood to go. Amy rose from the bed.
They were almost to the hall when Ian said, “Grandma told me what she did.” Jesse and Amy stopped and turned to the bed.
“She told me how the hospital called and she went there and asked you to stay away from Mom.” He looked at Jesse. “She said she did it because she thought it was the best thing for Mom, but now she’s not sure it was.”
Amy sat down beside her son.
“I don’t know if I want to go to Texas. I don’t know what I want.” He sighed. Amy put her hand on his knobby shoulder. Ian looked at Jesse. “But you marrying Mom, I think that would be the best thing for her.”
“What about you, Ian?” Jesse asked his son.
The boy shrugged. “It’d be okay.”
Amy smiled at her son. She threw her arms around him and pulled him to her.
“Mom,” he protested, trying to wiggle out of her embrace, but she wouldn’t let him go. She kept her arm around her son’s shoulders as she reached out her hand to Jesse. He held it tight. Amy knew they would not let go of each other, either. Never again.
That was how Amy’s mother, unable to put off her curiosity any longer, found them. Smiling, holding on tight. Together.
EPILOGUE
AMY ROCKED on the porch, looking out at the surrounding lands, waiting for the new Bronco with the star on its side to come over the horizon. Turning Point’s landscape had changed. There were gaping holes where trees had been ripped out by the roots, open spaces where once a house or business stood. Reminders of Damon’s wrath. Not that people were likely to forget. Yet they were getting on with their lives, rebuilding with the same stubborn determination that had created this town.
Amy gave a small yawn and stretched. She had finished her twelve-hour shift earlier that day and driven the distance from Beeville, where she was finishing her residency. After it was completed, she would take over Doc Holland’s practice. As Mitch had predicted, Turning Point’s doctor was ready to retire. In the meantime, Cheryl Tierney was working with him and studying for her nurse practitioner’s license. Together she and Amy hoped to set up a new urgent care medical facility, which would help to relieve the area’s sorely lacking medical emergency services. She and Jesse often got together with Cheryl and Noah Arkin, Turning Point’s veterinarian. Noah had saved Cheryl’s life during the hurricane when he’d pulled her out of a car caught in the river’s violent current, and then captured her heart.
Nate Kellison, the paramedic who’d come with the Courage Bay team during Damon, was here in Turning Point, too, but Amy didn’t see him as much. He was busy running the ranch with Jolene Angel and anxiously awaiting the birth of her baby. His new boss and future father-in-law, Mitch, also kept him busy working for the town’s fire department.
Dana Ivie was here, too. Having finally met her match in pilot Micky Flynn, she’d found she couldn’t just walk away. And neither could Micky, whose past relationships with women had strictly adhered to his be-gone-by-breakfast rule.
Amy saw the Bronco come into sight over the slight rise and smiled. The vehicle parked. She watched Jesse emerge, and walk toward the porch, never failing to enjoy his easy gait, the large, long frame of his body. Her husband. Her mind would tell her that again and again, and still it did not fail to amaze her.
They had decided if Ian agreed to live in Texas, he and Amy would move there before the school year started so Ian wouldn’t have to change schools midyear. Ian had agreed, reluctantly, but once he arrived in Texas, Jesse’s cousin’s boys and the rest of Jesse’s family took him as one of their own. Spending time together on a daily basis had also cemented his relationship with Jesse, and although there had been bumps along the way, the two were steadily progressing toward the closeness shared by a father and son. Ian’s complaints were now fewer and pertained more to chores and bedtime curfews.
With Ian’s blessing, Amy and Jesse had married last weekend in a simple ceremony on the land where his house had been rebuilt with friends throughout the community. Ian had been the best man.
Rachel had flown in with Guy and the baby to be Amy’s maid of honor, and in an unconventional twist that surely would have pleased Aunt Betts, Amy had asked her mother to walk her down the aisle and give her away.
Jesse climbed the steps to the porch. She lifted her face for his kiss as he came to her. Her brow furrowed slightly as she looked past him. “Where’s Ian?”
Jesse sat down in the rocking chair beside Amy. He took her hand as he began to rock, and kissed her fingertips.
“Aunt Edna asked if he could have dinner and sleep over with the boys.”
“Again?” Amy chuckled softly. “I thought it was our turn for the sleepover.”
“Probably, but Aunt Edna enjoys fussing over them. And—” he pulled her up by her hand and led her to his lap “—it gives you time alone with your handsome husband.”
She leaned down and kissed his lips, then settled her head on his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her and rocked her.
“Jesse?”
“Mmm?”
“You know the back room we were planning on finishing next summer?”
“Mmm,” he murmured contentedly. “The one we were going to make a guest bedroom.”
“Will you have time to finish it before then?”
“Probably. Why? Is your mother after you to visit?”
“Always.”
Jesse chuckled and Amy closed her eyes, taking a moment to revel in the sound.
“You know Aunt Edna and Uncle Frank said they’d be glad to put her up until we get the house finished.”
Amy straightened to look Jesse in the eyes. “We don’t need the room for my mother.” She smiled as the puzzlement on Jesse’s face segued into understanding.
“Do you mean…?” He placed a large palm gently on her abdomen, where only a slight curve revealed the child inside. His comprehension changed into joy.
She covered his hand with her own and nodded. “During the storm.”
He laughed and kissed his bride.
“If it’s a girl, I’d like to call her Elizabeth.”
He nodded. “And if it’s a boy?”
Looking at each other, they blurted, “Damon.” Still laughing softly, Amy snuggled against her husband. He embraced her, and together they sat for a long time, silently rocking as the day drew to an end. In the coming darkness, a bolt of lightning split the sky.
“Storm’s coming,” Jesse noted.
Amy nodded, settling into her husband’s arms, listening to the beat of his heart, which matched her own. A clap of thunder follo
wed the lightning. Soon rain would begin to fall. Jesse and Amy sat together content. They’d faced much bigger storms than this one. And won.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-5092-9
HARD RAIN
Copyright © 2004 by Harlequin Books S.A.
Darlene Scalera is acknowledged as the author of this work
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