human shield.” She kissed his cheek. “And I love you for it.” She tried not to jar his arm with her movement.
He went still. “Did you just say you love me?”
Shit! She had said that. “It’s a figure of speech. It means extreme gratitude.” But when she glanced up to see if her explanation had defused whatever discomfort he was feeling, she forgot to breathe. His face was lit with an emotion that looked like happiness. “Are you glad that I said ‘I love you for it’?” she asked.
His expression turned serious. “When you’re getting shot at, your brain focuses on the most important facts. What I focused on was how empty my life would be if I lost you.” He ghosted a hand over her hair. “Maybe it’s too soon to say this, but I know from my mother’s death that tomorrow could be too late.”
Her heart seemed to stop beating as his gaze skimmed over her face before he continued. “I want to see you every day and sleep beside you every night. I want to make love to you in every room in your apartment and my penthouse and anywhere else we feel like it.”
Dawn started to say she was good with that program, but he laid a finger across her lips. “I want to go back to Carmella’s and eat a whole dinner there with you. I want to take you to my favorite restaurant in Paris. I want to learn what movies and books you like, what TV shows you hate, what you like to cook. I want to wake you up in the middle of the night when I miss my mother. I want to comfort you when you feel a panic attack rising. I sure as hell want to make sure you never get shot at again.” He bent down to kiss her slow and deep.
Her heart began to dance, skipping around in a fluttery, exuberant rhythm as his lips moved over hers. He lifted his head, locking his gaze with hers before he said, “I want to love you, Dawn.”
“I want you to love me.” She summoned up all her courage to say, “Because I love you.” It was hard to form those words because she’d been hiding them from herself, so she tried again. “I love you. A lot.”
He gave a short, triumphant laugh. “I wasn’t sure. You don’t give much away. But I hoped, especially after you told me about what happened to you. I thought that meant something.”
She combed her fingers through his soft hair. “It meant so much. I told you the ugly truth about me and you didn’t run away.”
“There is nothing ugly about you,” he said, feathering his fingertips over her face so that tendrils of delight rippled over her skin. “Something ugly happened to you. It’s a very important distinction.”
“You’re helping me to understand that.”
“Even more important is that you turned the ugliness into good. You taught other women how to defend themselves so they could avoid the horror you lived through. You saved Alice’s life. Hell, you saved our lives.”
“We saved our lives. It was mutual.” She pulled his head back down to kiss him. She couldn’t get over the wonder of being loved by this brilliant man who believed she was just as brilliant as he was, in her own way. And now even she was beginning to believe it.
When they finally came up for air, Leland stroked his hand down her back to squeeze her butt. “You can’t tell a man you love him and then refuse to make love with him.”
“But your arm!”
“Exactly! Shouldn’t getting shot while saving your life earn me some significant gratitude?” He raised his eyebrows while giving her a hot smile.
“Okay, but if you bleed to death, don’t blame me.” She ran her palms down his chest to untie the cord of his sweatpants.
He slipped his hands up under her shirt. “At least I’ll die a happy man.”
Epilogue
Six months later
“Hard forward!” their guide, Boof, shouted. “Dig in! This one’s gnarly!”
Leland wedged his feet more firmly under the raft’s side and shoved his paddle deep into the madly frothing water before hauling it back. The bow of the craft rose up as it hit the standing wave and then plunged down the other side like a roller coaster.
“Wahoo!” Tully yelled as frigid water crashed over them. The other side of the raft rode up over a rock so that Derek was tilted upward and nearly toppled down on