Melt for You (Slow Burn Book 2)

by J. T. Geissinger

  Kids. My heart races like a thoroughbred heading into the home stretch at Churchill Downs. I breathe loudly through my mouth, like I do when I have a cold. “But I’ve . . . I’ve only been here for six weeks.”

  Holding two tea bags he got from the cupboard, he saunters over to the stove. “Yep. And how many times during those six weeks have you told me how much you love it here?”

  When I don’t answer because I’m too busy hyperventilating through my mouth and wondering if instead of a heart attack I’m suffering a stroke, he continues the conversation without me.

  “You love my flat. You love the city. You love workin’ from home. You love Nanny O’Shea. You love the food—except for haggis—and the people, and the weather, and my mates on the Devils, and sittin’ in the stands, watchin’ me play. You love that Mr. Bingley has a girlfriend.”

  He gestures to the cat bed under the dining room table, where Mr. Bingley contentedly snoozes with a sleek black cat half his size named Cleo. Cam adopted her from a shelter when I first arrived because he thought it was time for Mr. Bingley to give up his bachelorhood. The two cats have been inseparable ever since. Even in sleep, they’re curled around each other, one dark and one light, yin and yang.

  “In fact,” he pretends to think, tapping his chin with the tea bag, “I think the only thing you haven’t yet said you love . . . is me.”

  He holds my gaze for a few beats, then turns the gas on under the kettle on the stove, gets two mugs from another cupboard, sets them on the counter, and drops the tea bags into them. Then he folds his arms over his chest, leans against the counter, and stares at me.

  Me, sitting on the sofa, concentrating all my energy on staying upright. “I . . . I . . .”

  Cam arches his brows. He cups a hand around one ear. “Sorry, what was that? Were you trying to say somethin’, lass?”

  I stand unsteadily, feeling my pulse in my whole body. Then I slowly make my way over to where Cam is standing in the kitchen. It seems as if I’m floating toward him, my feet barely skimming the ground. When I reach him, he takes me in his arms and gazes down at me with a secret little smile, his eyes half-lidded and hot.

  “Go ahead,” he prompts. “Tell me how you were in love with me from the start, only you mistook that funny feelin’ in your stomach for gas. Tell me how I knocked you off your feet from the first moment I opened my mouth and you heard my incredibly sexy voice. Tell me how no other man on earth looks as good in a kilt as I do or makes you laugh like I do.” His voice drops. “Or makes you scream like I do. Go on, lass. Tell me.”

  I’m trembling all over, my heart fluttering frantically like a trapped hummingbird inside my chest. “Yes,” I whisper, gazing up into his eyes. “Yes to all that.”

  His secret smile deepens. He threads his fingers into my hair and combs them through, watching the strands flow over his hand. Then he gently tugs on a lock to bring me closer. “Now tell me how happy I make you.”

  “Stupidly happy. Amazingly happy. Yes.”

  He leans in and brushes his lips against my cheek. “And how you want to spend the rest of your life just like this.” He gives me a quick, hard squeeze. “In my arms.”

  My throat is closing in on itself. My voice breaks when I say, “Yes.”

  Cam presses the softest of kisses on my neck, then looks deep into my eyes. In a husky whisper, he says, “Now tell me you love me, lass. And make it good, ’cause you’ve made me wait too long.”

  I exhale a shaky breath, gather myself, and do as he commands.

  “I love you the way I love the smell of old books. I love you the way I love a hot bath on a cold day. I love you the way I love sonnets and ice cream and a swimsuit that doesn’t make me look like I’m made of burrata. I love you the way I love the sun on my face in winter. The way I love a favorite song playing on the radio when I’m driving home from the beach on a summer day.”

  He swallows, his eyes shining with emotion. I go up on my toes and press a soft kiss to his lips.

  Against his mouth, I murmur, “I love you like I love starry nights, and really crunchy pickles, and discovering an amazing new author, and Sunday mornings in bed with the paper and chocolate croissants. Like I love the way the air smells after it rains. Like I love to laugh.”

  He drops his face to my neck and presses it there, tightening his arms around me, so I whisper the last part right into his ear.

  “But actually I love you more than all those things combined, Cameron McGregor. I love you like I never knew I could love anything. You’re more important to me than air itself, and I don’t ever want to spend a day without you. Because you believed in me, this little ugly duckling finally became a swan.”

  A delicate shudder runs through his chest. He inhales deeply, squeezing me so tight I feel every single wild beat of his heart.

  “You were always a swan, you bloody idiot,” he says in a strangled voice.

  I tilt my head back and laugh, though my eyes are filled with tears. They’re happy tears, however. Happy-ever-after tears. “Whatever I am, prancer, I’m yours. Now kiss me before you say something stupid and ruin the moment.”

  “God, you’re bossy,” he grumbles, but when he lifts his head, he’s grinning from ear to ear. His eyes are filled with happy tears, too. He bends his head toward mine but then stops. “Wait.”

  I crinkle my brow. “What?”

  “You haven’t said you’ll marry me.”

  “Well . . . technically, you haven’t asked.”

  He pretends to think about it. “You’re right. I haven’t.”

  When he doesn’t say anything else, I prompt, “So?”

  “So I think I should wait until after lunch. I’m pretty hungry.”

  “Cam!” Outraged, I smack his arm.

  He laughs, delighted by my reaction, which is obviously exactly what he was hoping for. “All right, hold your horses, Miss Snufflebottom, gimme a minute to compose myself before I pop the question!”

  I stare at him with pursed lips as he clears his throat and adopts a serious expression. When he looks at me, I realize I’m holding my breath.

  He declares, “We’re gettin’ married.”

  “Ugh! That wasn’t a question!”

  He presses his lips together to keep from laughing. “Are we getting married?”

  I growl like a bear, ready to rip his head off. This is the first marriage proposal I’ve ever received, and the man is making jokes! I look at his smug, smirking face and decide I need to take matters into my own hands.

  “Fine. I can see I’m going to have to take control of this situation.” I straighten my shoulders, lift my chin, and look him right in the eye. “Cameron McGregor, will you marry me?”

  His expression goes all melty, as if he’s fighting tears. He takes my face in his hands, whispers vehemently, “I thought you’d never ask,” and kisses me like he’s starving.

  When the kettle starts to whistle, neither one of us pays it any mind.

  Once upon a time, in a land not so far away,

  A duckling born to a family of swans

  Was mistakenly led astray.

  It took a prince of beauty and brawn

  With a brogue like rich brown sugar

  To show the duckling the way back home

  So she could grow bigger, better, surer

  Of herself so she no longer had to roam

  Through the dark forest of lost hearts.

  But along the way she fell under his spell

  From the prince she never wanted to part,

  In the circle of his arms she longed to dwell.

  So the duckling said to her princely valentine

  “For all time I’ll be yours, and forever you’ll be mine.”

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This is the fun part of the book, after all the cursing and crying is done and the bleeding has almost completely stopped. Writing a novel has several things in common with childbirth, not the least of which is the overwhelming relief at a successful delivery
after many months of uncomfortable gestation. (I don’t have kids, but the comparison was irresistible.)

  Before I get to the thank-yous, I want to tell you about a close friend I had when I was a teenager. We’ll call her Eva (not her real name). Eva was the most beautiful girl I have ever seen, even to this day, some thirty years later. She was of Irish descent, with long, dark hair, enormous crystal-blue eyes, and skin so perfect it glowed. Tall, graceful, and always the most popular girl throughout junior high and high school, she was universally loved.

  She was also filled with intense self-loathing.

  Convinced her perfect body was fat, she dieted rigorously, eating only saltines, rice cakes, and celery, until she grew so thin her period stopped. She worked out like a machine, running miles every day before school. She was obsessed with how she looked, down to the tiniest detail, and would spend hours in front of the mirror, trying on new outfits, picking at imaginary blemishes, learning new makeup techniques to contour already-hollow cheeks.

  Her mother couldn’t be bothered to notice. She was too busy drinking chardonnay. Her father—her parents were divorced—liked to tell Eva she better get married quick because she was too dumb for college.

  Eva scored a 1510 on the SAT, in the ninety-ninth percentile. When I told her she could get into almost any college with that test score, that she could go to Harvard if she wanted, she laughed.

  She was too dumb for college, she said. Everyone knew that. It was a mistake.

  The day she turned eighteen, Eva got breast implants. A few months later, after we graduated, she met a man twenty-five years her senior, a wealthy businessman who spotted her crossing a parking lot. He was struck by her beauty and followed her to her car to introduce himself. Within a few weeks of meeting, they’d eloped to Europe. I never heard from her again.

  Several years later, I got a phone call from my mother. Sit down, she said. I have terrible news.

  Eva had been murdered. Her much-older husband had poisoned her over the course of many months with overdoses of prescription medication. He’d buried her before even telling her parents she was dead.

  The tragedy of Eva is one of huge potential lost to neglect and negativity. People can internalize even the most obvious falsehoods if they’re repeated often enough. When you’re surrounded by negativity, that’s what you tend to absorb. You become what you’re most often told you are.

  I wish I could go back in time and tell Eva how much I loved her, how smart she was, how much she had to offer the world, but I can’t. But every time I meet a young girl, I want to hug her close and tell her she’s so much more special than she realizes. That her worth as a person and her looks are two entirely different things.

  If you have young daughters at home, I hope you’ll do the same. They hear every word you say . . . and all the things you don’t.

  THANK YOU to my team at Montlake Romance, who has nurtured my career since 2011. I love our partnership and hope it continues until I no longer want to write, which will be never. Thanks to Maria Gomez, my editor, who makes me laugh every time I talk to her. Thanks to Melody Guy, my developmental editor, who is a genius, and who knows how to say nice things about my work while pointing out how much it needs to be improved. Thanks also to the copy editors, proofreaders, and PR and marketing teams at Amazon Publishing, who are the best.

  To my “old” readers, thanks for sticking with me for fifteen novels. I had no idea I’d be here, either. To my new readers, I hope you’ll stick around for the next fifteen. At my current pace of work, that will be approximately four years from when this book was published, so hang in there. I promise I’ll keep it interesting.

  To my mother, who turned ninety this year, thank you for focusing on building my character and inner strength and for making it perfectly clear that my value as a human being isn’t tied to my looks or to anyone else’s opinion of me.

  And finally, to my best friend, Jay Geissinger, who also happens to be the best human being I’ve ever met, thank you for loving all my parts, inside and out, even the ugly ones.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A former headhunter, J.T. Geissinger is the author of more than a dozen novels of paranormal romance, romantic suspense, and contemporary romance, including Melt for You and Burn for You in her Slow Burn series. She is the recipient of a Prism Award for Best First Book and a Golden Quill Award for Best Paranormal/Urban Fantasy. She’s a two-time finalist for the RITA Award from the Romance Writers of America, and her works have been finalists for the Booksellers’ Best, National Readers’ Choice, and Daphne du Maurier Awards. Find her on the web at www.jtgeissinger.com.