her barstool until her back was to the counter, and he was standing between her thighs.
“I don’t know what I would have done if you didn’t love me the way I love you. Probably gone back to London brokenhearted…again. Only last time, even though it hurt like hell, I told myself I was doing the right thing. Despite my best intentions, I know I wasn’t always graceful about it—I was in pain—but I understood that letting you go was the only option available to me. Telling you how I felt would have been manipulative. Unfair. I couldn’t do that to you.
“But when you started messaging me, I hoped it meant something. Only you wouldn’t stop talking about Stormy and sending me stupid jokes and dumb videos and asking me impersonal questions about fucking work, and I was so damned confused!”
In his eyes was an echo of the frustration and bewilderment he had felt at her bombardment of silly messages. Charity wrapped her arms around his neck and stroked his nape in apology.
While her heart joyfully soared out of her chest and flitted around the kitchen like a drunken, happy butterfly
He loved her.
Despite her regret at her poor handling of the situation with the texts and impersonal calls and voice notes, she couldn’t stop herself from grinning at his confession.
“You love me,” she murmured.
He was smiling. A beautiful, broad, fully dimpled smile. “You love me.”
“I do,” she confirmed. “So much. But you were right to let me figure it out on my own. I needed the time apart to recognize my feelings for you as deep, genuine, and irrefutable.”
“And apparently you needed to shop around too,” he muttered, eyeing her askance.
She laughed, “I confess, I had to kiss a few toads before I recognized that I’d already found my frog.”
“Waaait a second…” He frowned at the analogy. “That’s not how that goes.”
“No, it is,” she maintained earnestly, before getting up and plastering her chest against his. She hugged him and whispered her next words directly into his ear. “Once upon a time, I had the perfect golden prince, and he was rotten to the core. I don’t need a perfect prince, Miles. I need you. You’re imperfect and you’re beautiful and I love you exactly the way you are.”
He made a choked sound in the back of his throat and turned his head, his hawkish nose bumping hers in his haste to kiss her. She giggled but was abruptly silenced when his lips latched onto hers fiercely. All thought of laughter fled when he swung her into his arms and carried her from the kitchen without releasing her mouth.
When they next came up for air, they were both naked, sweaty, and sated. Charity was curled up against his chest, her fingers tracing lazy circles through his silky chest hairs. Everything about him was so damned perfect.
“So now what?” she wondered out loud.
“Hmm? I don’t know…a shower maybe? I must be getting ripe.”
“I love the way you smell,” she said on a yawn. “Warm and musky and delicious. You smell like home to me. But that’s not what I meant.”
“What did you mean then?”
“What happens next? With us? I can’t leave, Miles. I have the practice opening on Monday. My life is here.”
“I wouldn’t ask you to leave,” he placated. “No, this is partly what all the restructuring at the company was about. Initially, it was for the reasons I gave, I needed to take things easier, needed my life to be about more than work. But after you contacted me last month, I started hoping that we could somehow find our way back to each other. The company represents my life’s work, Charity. I will continue to chair. And consult. I will probably need to go back to London a few times a year for meetings, but I can do a lot from here with just a laptop and Wi-Fi—barring storms and blackouts of course. In fact, I may have to invest in a satellite phone and a stronger generator. Minor details. The gist of what I’m saying is that…I’m happy to move here, on a semi-permanent basis.”
“Miles, you’d be uprooting your whole life.”
He tenderly grasped her chin between his thumb and index finger and tipped her head back until she could see his eyes.
“Charity, you are my life. And since you’re here, that means my life is here.”
“Oh, Miles.” Her eyes flooded, and she rewarded the beautiful sentiment with a kiss. She was somber when she lifted her lips from