If she took long enough with the security gates and the door, maybe she could figure out how she felt about him showing up here. She didn’t want gratitude. She didn’t want guilt. It was impossible to squelch hope, but it was equally impossible to forget what they’d been through.
What she was still going through every minute of every day.
“There are chairs,” she told him, pulling one over for him before she walked behind the counter. Keep the distance, she thought. “So, what’s on your mind?”
For a moment, he was silent, just looking at her like a man stranded in the desert looks at water. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. I spent weeks in that hospital bed after you left with nothing much to do but think. About you and me, about the baggage you keep and the baggage you throw away.” He rubbed his thumb along the chrome edge of the display case. “I know I said some bad things to you that night in the hotel. It wasn’t about you. It was about me trying to run away.” He gave a humorless smile. “But you know how that goes. You can’t run away from yourself. And you can’t run away from truths.” He took a breath. “I love you, Joss, and that’s the truest thing I know.”
“You don’t,” she countered, panicked because she wanted to believe him. Panicked because she didn’t think her heart could survive being broken again. “You just think you do. You’re confusing love with gratitude and protectiveness.”
“I’m not getting anything confused. I’m really, really clear now. You’ve got a right to be upset with me. I blew it. Getting involved with you scared the hell out of me and my knee-jerk reaction was to bolt. But that’s over with. I don’t want to run from it now.” He smiled slightly and raised his cane from the ground. “Even if I could.”
“How can you be so sure?” she demanded. “You say it’s all different, but how do I know that in a week or a month you’re not going to turn around and tell me you don’t want to be in a relationship, that you just want to be on your own?”
He frowned and glanced away. “The same way I know that you won’t.” He looked at her, then. “I’m willing to trust in us. I’m hoping you’ll do the same.”
“I already did that, thanks. I’m not in any hurry to go through it again.” Especially when the pain was still going on.
“Look, I was wrong.” He rose, pressing his hands on the edge of the counter. “I’ll say it again, if you want. I was wrong. I got caught up in the past but I’m telling you, it’s done. And I am going to keep telling you until you believe me. I don’t care if it takes a while. I’ve got the time and I am not going anywhere. I’ll come back here tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow and every day after that for as long as it takes.” His gaze arrowed through her. “As long as it takes, Joss, and when you’re through testing me, I’ll still be here. Because I love you and that is not going to change.”
There wasn’t enough air in the room, she thought, stunned. Surely that was why her lungs wouldn’t work. Surely that was why she couldn’t speak, why her mind couldn’t assimilate it all.
A second passed, then two, and finally Bax shrugged. “Well, you’ve got to get to your class.” He winked at her with a mixture of humor and defiance. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” He started to turn away, then swung back toward her. “Of course, while I’m happy to come to the store every day we could actually do something civilized like dinner. I’d join your class but as you can see, I have issues. Anyway, I’ll see you later.”
“No!” Suddenly, she found her voice. “I mean yes. I mean…hell, I don’t know. Oh God, Bax, do you mean it?”
His lips twitched. “I stand here and pour my heart out to you, with your sister no doubt listening, and you have to ask that?” He smiled. “Okay, for the record, I am crazy about you. I think about you every minute of every day. I want to spend the rest of my life with you, and a couple of lifetimes after that, if we can manage it. And I would be very happy, honored, even, to stand up in front of a room full of witnesses and say it all again.”
And it was that easy, Joss thought dazedly as she came around the counter and he gathered her into his arms. His body was hard and warm and real against her, and it was then that the tears started. “I’ve missed you so much,” she murmured, blinking.
He exhaled. “It made me nuts, staying away from you, but I figured I had to or you wouldn’t believe me.” He pressed a kiss into her hair. “And then I figured the hell with waiting. I’d find some other way to convince you.”
“Have you figured that out, yet?”
“No, but I’m working on it.” And then he kissed her.
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IMPRINT: Blaze
ISBN: 9781488772627
TITLE: SEALED WITH A KISS
First Australian Publication 2015
Copyright © 2013 Kristin Hardy
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Mills & Boon®, Level 4, 132 Arthur Street, North Sydney, N.S.W., Australia 2060.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Sealed With a Kiss Page 22
