me this? We could have spent three days in bed instead of snorkeling and visiting every temple on the island.”
They kissed again, the warm breeze swirling around them, tantalizing and seductive. She wanted to tug him inside to her villa, even though warning bells were sounding that everything between them would change if she did.
She didn’t want to listen to those bells. She wanted to live in the moment, with him, this man she...cared about.
José was the one who stopped, who stepped away, breathing raggedly. “I won’t be one of your short-term flings, where you run off as soon as things start to get serious. I want more than that. I need to know that you are as committed as I am before we go any further.”
At his words, she had felt as if he had dunked her into the ocean without warning, as if she was drenched and sputtering and fighting for air.
“That’s not fair,” she had finally managed. “You know that’s not what I want right now.”
“Then I’ll wait until it is what you want.”
She had felt perilously close to tears. Again, probably because she was a little tipsy. It couldn’t have anything to do with the line he was drawing in the sand at this tropical paradise. A line she would never cross.
“That’s stupid. Why not just sleep together now? We both want to.”
He had gazed at her for a long time in the moonlight, his features shadowed, inscrutable.
“I am thirty-three years old, Lucy. I don’t want another meaningless relationship. I’m looking for something deeper. Something that will last beyond the sunrise. And I want that with you.”
She didn’t remember everything she had said in response but was fairly certain none of it showed her in a good light.
He had kissed her one more time on the forehead, leaving her achy and hungry, then had gone into his villa.
The next morning, they had barely spoken on the way back to the airport as she prepared to fly back to Chiang Mai and he on the first leg of his long journey back home.
Her head had pounded, her throat had been tight and her eyes had felt gritty and sore, as if the entire beach had poured over her in her sleep. Finally, just when they would have separated at their respective gates, he had kissed her again, holding her for a long time. “Goodbye. I love you, Lucy. When you’re ready to say those words back, I’ll be waiting.”
“Don’t bother,” she had snapped. “I’ll never be ready.”
It had been completely unfair of him to throw that at her. He knew what her childhood had been like. Her parents’ marriage had been a nightmare. They loved and hated each other with equal passion, and had divorced and married twice that she could remember. Each had had affairs, marriages, divorces, remarriages.
It had been chaotic and horrible, and had convinced her she was genetically incapable of a long-term relationship. She would never put someone she cared about through that kind of turmoil.
She had decided when she was about thirteen years old, listening to her mother sob after yet another relationship disaster, that she wasn’t ever going to be vulnerable like that. She refused.
Yes, she preferred short-term relationships where both parties knew the ground rules. It wasn’t like she slept around. She’d had a grand total of four relationships. It was completely unfair of José to make it seem like she was the kind of woman who loved a man and then left him.
Everything had changed between her and José after Thailand. And yet... He still texted her a couple of times a week and they had video chatted a few times, usually at the request of his brother Rodrigo, who José knew was Lucy’s one and only true love.
José never referred to the ultimatum he had given her, but it was always there simmering just below the surface. He wanted a relationship with her but only on his terms, which were exactly the terms she couldn’t accept.
She would see him again in two weeks, when she returned to Silver Bells for the holidays. It was inevitable. He worked for Lancaster Hotels, his mother was one of Winnie’s best friends and the two families were close.
How would she handle it?
Easy. She had told him how she felt, and she wasn’t about to change her mind.
No matter how much she might ache to be in his arms again.
Three
Abby woke up in that strange netherworld of semiconsciousness, not knowing for a few moments