“Can’t we stay in bed?” she groaned. “It’s Sunday and we have nowhere to be.”
“Nope.” I was out of bed and around to her side before she finished her complaint. “Out of bed now or I’ll tickle you.”
She groaned again. “Fine. I’m getting up.” It was the ultimate Achilles’ heel being ticklish. I could get her to do just about anything to avoid being tickled.
“Put on something warm,” I instructed. “We’re going outside.”
I noted the change in her demeanour and I knew she was now intrigued. “Okay, Mr Bossy.”
Taking her by the hand, I led her out of our bedroom, down the hall and into the utility room, where I pointed to her red jacket. “Where are you taking me?” she asked, pulling it off the hook together with her black scarf and beanie.
“Patience, Jules.”
“Not my strongest virtue,” she said, looking at me with raised eyebrows. “You know this.”
“I do know, babe, but it’ll be worth the wait.” I pulled her to me by my scarf and planted a scorching kiss on her lips before pulling back so I could look her in the eye. “I promise.”
I pulled on my black coat and charcoal-grey beanie.
“God, my boyfriend is hot,” she said, shamelessly ogling me again.
I chuckled at her as I held the back door open for her. She shivered when she stepped outside, but she closed her eyes while she inhaled the cold, wintery air deeply. While I knew she was admiring the frost-covered grass, the bare trees and the perfect, cloudless blue sky, I sent our next door neighbour, Wendy, a quick text as planned.
“Our home is paradise in all seasons, but winter is my favourite,” she stated, taking another deep breath, smiling. Her irritation at being dragged out of bed and forced patience had evaporated like I knew it would.
“This way,” I said, seizing her hand in mine and gently tugging her down the garden. I pushed open the gate leading to the field and ushered her through. Halfway across the field, I stopped and turned her to face me.
“You are so beautiful.” I held her face and the rest of the world didn’t exist.
“Thank you.” She looked me in the eye. “You’re not so bad yourself, but did you drag me out of bed to tell me that?”
I closed the gap between us, wrapped my arms around her and kissed her. We never just kissed though. The impact of our lips meeting was incomparable.
I pulled back and had to laugh when she gripped my jacket and tried to pull me back to her. “I have something to show you.” I took hold of her shoulders and turned her so she was facing the direction of Wendy’s farm. I could see Wendy removing the head collar from and releasing my present for Juliette into our field. We waved to each other before she returned to her farm. The horse whinnied then trotted towards us. I looked at Jules and could see confusion written on her face.
“Did Wendy get a new horse?” she asked, meeting my gaze.
“Nope.” I shook my head.
“Surely not,” she whispered more to herself than to me.
We walked in silence towards the horse that was now grazing. He lifted his head from the grass when we got closer. His ears were forward and he appeared very interested in us.
“What’s going on, Leo?”
We were standing right in front of him now, and she reached up to stroke the white star between his eyes. He dropped his head slightly, enjoying the attention it seemed.
“This is Cardinal and he belongs to you now,” I informed her.
She snapped her head up and studied my face, probably deciding how serious I was. I smiled, making sure she knew I wasn’t pulling her leg.
She covered her mouth. “Are you serious?” She was speaking through her fingers.
“Are you happy?” I asked.
“I’m always happy with you.”
“Good, because I’m deadly serious.”
She threw her arms around my neck. “You are something else, Leo Ashlar. You know that?”
“Do you remember when we came here the first time and I asked you to tell me the top five things you loved?”
She smiled at the memory. “Horses were on the list.” She nodded. “I remember.”
“Cold weather.” I held up my hand and splayed my fingers. “Your number five. Today is a beautiful winter’s day—your favourite time of year.” He pointed at Cardinal. “Horses were your number four.” He patted his sleek neck. “A few months ago, I asked Wendy if she could keep an eye out for a good horse I could buy for you. I’ve seen a few since, but somehow I knew Cardinal was meant for you.”
She looked back at her horse. “My horse.” She shook her head as if overwhelmed by the idea.
I held up three fingers. “Getting dirty in the garden was your number three.” I snickered. “I seem to recall being incredibly turned on when you told me you loved being on your hands and knees.”
She chuckled. “I think I called you a pervert.”
“I think you did too. But look what you’ve accomplished.” He pointed back towards the house.
“We’ve accomplished,” she insisted.
We had spent the last eighteen months working on our garden. It was now the garden of her dreams, and as she’d hoped, she regularly made us dinner using vegetables from her sacred vegetable garden. I pushed a loose strand of hair behind her ear that had blown across her face and kissed her and got so lost in her, I almost considered abandoning the rest of my plan. Eventually, my brain kicked back in and I pulled back.
“Kissing,” I said against her lips. “Kissing me was your number two.”
“I will never grow tired of kissing you, my love.”
“That’s a good thing,” I said, knowing I would kill any man who tried. “A very good thing.”
As I approached the end of our trip down memory lane, I could feel a light sheen of sweat break out on my forehead despite the frosty temperature, and I felt nervous.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, suspicious.
I pushed her back to arm’s length and then took a step back. I held up my hand, indicating she should wait. “Nothing is wrong in the world, Jules. Trust me.”
She cocked her head and bit her bottom lip. “You are being very cryptic,” she said as her gaze dropped to my hand, which was pulling a small black box from my pocket. She then gasped when I dropped down onto one knee.
“Oh. My. God,” she gasped, her hands flying back over her mouth and her eyes immediately filling with tears. A few slipped down her rosy cheeks.
Once I knew she was listening and over her initial shock, I spoke the words I hoped she’d remember for the rest of her life.
“Juliette Elizabeth Salinger. Cold weather, horses, the garden and kissing me. That just leaves your number one.”
“You,” she whispered, more tears breaking free.
I nodded, placing my left hand over my heart. “I have always been and will always be yours. We had to fight to get here. We had to fight for this life, but falling in love with you was the easiest thing in the world. I want you to be my wife and I want to have babies with you who will always know how much their parents love each other and them.” He held up a ring, but she didn’t break eye contact. “You are, and will always be, my number one, Juliette. Will you marry me?”
She let out a sob. “Yes. Yes. Of course.” She was still nodding furiously as I stood up and gently placed the ring on her wedding finger. I then wrapped in her in my arms and kissed the love of my life.
She pulled back, wide eyed. “In the space of half an hour, I’ve been given a horse and a fiancé. I think I might be dreaming.” She stared at Cardinal then back at me. “How long have you been planning to propose?”
I answered her immediately. “Since the moment our lives collided, I knew you were it for me. The impact was a once in a lifetime event.”
“Like a comet?” she asked, and I think she was mentally patting herself on the back for the astronomy reference.
“Actually, no.” He scrunched his nose and chuckled.
“Nothing like a comet, my gorgeous fiancée.”
Then it was her turn to scrunch up her nose. “That’s a weird word.”
“Well, then. We’ll just have to make sure I can use the word wife sooner rather than later.”
“Wife.” She pondered that for a second. “I like the sound of that.” She smiled and looked down at her ring for the first time. Her eyes widened as she brought her hand up for closer inspection. She appeared mesmerised by the dark red ruby and pavé-set diamonds on a fine platinum band.
“Everything I read about rubies made it the perfect choice,” I stated.
She lowered her hand and took a step closer to me. “Tell me everything,” she murmured, seductively.
I smiled, grazing the back of my hand down her cheek. “The Greeks called rubies the mother of all gemstones, the Romans said it was the flower among stones and it’s a sacred stone for Buddhists. The clincher for me was that rubies are associated with rising Kundalini energy and is said to help you follow your bliss.” She sighed, glancing down at her wedding finger again. “Around the world, in different religions and different cultures, the ruby is considered precious, sacred and beautiful.” I looked into the eyes of my future wife. “You, my love, are all these things to me.”
She placed her hands flat against my chest and gazed up into my eyes. “You, Leo Ashlar, are something else.”
“So you like it then?” I asked. “Bea came with me to look, but I knew this one was special the second I laid eyes on it.” He winked. “Bit like the first time I saw you.”
“Like it?” she asked incredulously. “I love it for all those things, but mainly I love it because it symbolises my future with you.” She picked up my hand and kissed my palm without losing eye contact. “It’s a perfect winter’s day, I have a horse, I love being in the garden and of course I love kissing you. She placed my hand over her heart and held it there with both her hands. “You have my heart, Leo. You have all of me and I want all of you—mind, body and soul.”
“You have it all, Jules. You have all of me.”
She gave Cardinal another pat and told him how she already loved him because the most wonderful man in the world had given him to her. He just sniffed her pockets to see if she had anything tasty to offer him. She told him she’d come back with carrots.
I held out my hand and she took it immediately, snuggling into my side. When she shivered, I let her hand go and wrapped my arm around her shoulders, pulling her in closer. “Let’s go inside, beautiful.”
“I love you.”
I squeezed her tighter and pulled her impossibly closer to me, wanting to give her my warmth. “I love you too, Jules. So damn much.”
When we made it back into the garden, we stopped and looked up at our home. The farmhouse I’d grown up in and Juliette had been drawn to before she knew me, was unrecognisable even though we’d used a lot of the original stones. I had done a lot of the work myself, but had employed the best tradesmen in the state for everything else. Our home was a comparatively modest single-story farmhouse with a veranda that wrapped all the way around it, a slate roof and plantation shutters on every window. I loved our forever home, but it was primarily because of the woman I shared it with.
“I don’t ever want to live anywhere else,” she said as if reading my mind.
“Me either. This is where I belong and you belong with me.”
“I do.” She glanced at me and I gazed at her reverently. “This farm led me to you. There was a reason I was drawn to it, and it wasn’t the bricks and mortar. It was you. I was drawn to you in the cage and I was drawn to this farm. Both places have the good, the bad and the ugly, but they brought us together. Neither of us can escape the ugliness in our pasts, but we faced it together and now we make our own memories.” Her eyes were so full of intense love and conviction. “We overcame our pasts here and we came out stronger. We both tried running, but the road led us back here.”
I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “God, I can’t wait to make you my wife.”
“And just like that our crazy, mixed up boy-meets-girl love story got its happily ever after.”
I kissed her head. “Just like that.”
I no longer fought with rage, using it as a Band-Aid to shield my wound. I fought with something far more powerful. I fought with pride, I fought with love, but most of all, I fought for our life. Juliette’s and my life. We’d both faced our own individual battles, but they ended the moment our souls recognised their mate and became the Leo and Jules way. That was a fight we had won.
THE END
From the Author
Thank you so much for reading Impact. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I enjoyed writing it and will consider leaving a review. If you would like to keep in touch with me on social media, here are my links. I’d love to hear from you!
www.facebook.com/kasterritt
twitter.com/KASterritt
www.instagram.com/authorkasterritt/
www.kasterritt.com/
You can also chat to me in my readers group, K.A.’s Hummingbirds.
www.facebook.com/groups/1659909284230639
For an occasional email newsletter, here is the signup form.
http://eepurl.com/bxylHH
Acknowledgements
This book has been an epic journey and the final result exceeded my own expectations. I couldn’t have done it without the love and support of an ever growing group of people.
First and foremost, I want to thank my husband. Regardless of how many hours I spent at my desk, how many times I left him with the kids to go to the library or how many cricket games I missed, he was nothing but supportive. He never questioned why I do this or if it’s worth it. He is proud of me and knows I’m following my dream. I love that he will read my romance novels even though it’s not something he would ever pick up otherwise. I can write about soul mates because I’m married to mine.
Eli Peters. A massive thank you for all your help. When I got lost in the fog, I found my way out because of you.
To my beta and proof readers - Eli Peters, Tesrin Afzal, Brittainy McCane, Tara Hanrahan, my sisters and dad. Thank you so much for your time, attention to detail and positive feedback, especially when it came down to crunch time. You helped me make Impact the best it could be.
Adriana, you continue to be the greatest book bestie I could ever ask for and I forge on with you.
When I wrote the acknowledgements for Collision, I listed the founding members of my newly formed readers group, K.A.’s Hummingbirds. The number of members has grown so much and continues to be a source of great happiness and motivation for me. I would like to thank every member of the group for being there and I hope I’ve done you proud with this book. A special shout out to Pam Lilley who set up the group, is one of the greatest promoters of my books and is a valued friend.
Kell Donaldson. I’m so glad you read and loved Collision because it brought you into my life. I believe we were meant to be friends. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the incredible support you give me, but more importantly, for your friendship. Kell’s Bookmark Clique rocks and so do you!
Eli Carter, my northern hemisphere twin. I’m thankful every day for you. I’ve got your back always and I know you have mine. What a blessing!
To all the bloggers and friends who have supported me and helped promote my work, please know that it is appreciated and admired. The book world is full of loving and generous spirits and I’m grateful to be a part of it. I’d like to make a special mention to my friend, Darlene. She is truly one of the kindest, sweetest and most generous people I’ve ever known. As an avid reader and diehard book lover myself, her group, Darlene and Dexter’s Book Nook is one of my favourite places on Facebook.
Another big thank you to Nick Lundh, founder of the Lightning Fight Centres in Victoria and former World Professional Middle Weight Kickboxing Champion, Professional Boxer and Muay Thai Fighter. He continued to help me ensure the Impact fight scenes were as authen
tic as possible. I admire, and am inspired by what he does.
And finally, to my sisters and best friend - Zoe, Susie and Jen. I’m so proud of you and the amazing women you are. Thank you for always supporting me and my books.
Impact (The Fight for Life #2) Page 24
