Cocky Protector - Kat Mizera Page 0,35

my dad. And now that I’d gotten so close to Ace in such a short time, had him in my life again, he was keeping a distance between us I didn’t understand. I would have gladly made love with him already, but he’d used excuse after excuse and though my heart believed he was being a gentleman, my brain was starting to doubt everything about us being together.

“I waited nearly five years for you to come back.” I kept my voice soft in the darkness but he immediately glanced over his shoulder at me.

“What?” He turned over in the small bed, the muscles in his bare back flexing as he moved.

“I mean, not like, sitting by the phone or anything, but in my heart of hearts, deep down in the part of your soul you don’t let anyone see, I believed you would come back. Your service would be done or you’d retire or something, and you’d show up and tell me you’d been thinking about me the way I’d been thinking about you.”

“Oh, baby. That hurts my heart. You knew I wasn’t coming back. I told you I wasn’t coming back.”

“I know. But my heart, well, it has a mind of its own, I guess.”

“I’m sorry.”

“The night before my wedding, I couldn’t sleep. I was with my parents, so I went down to my dad’s den and sat there in the big armchair by the fire, wondering how I was going to survive being married to a man I didn’t really love. I liked him at that point, and thought we were going to have a good life, but I wasn’t madly in love with him. I didn’t have the feelings a woman getting married should’ve had.

“Dad came downstairs around three in the morning and found me. He knew I wasn’t happy and said we could cancel if I was having doubts. I said no because I didn’t know what else to say. He asked me what he could do and I asked him if he knew where you were. And just like that, he understood. He knew why I’d asked and said that while he didn’t know where you were, he’d move heaven and earth to find you if I wanted him to.”

I sniffled, mortified that he might hear me cry. He’d moved closer to the edge of my bed and reached out a hand, waiting until I closed my fingers around his.

“And then I felt so stupid,” I whispered. “I mean, you and I danced a few times and you kissed me. Big deal. I felt like an idiot admitting what I was feeling to my father, so I said I was just having last-minute jitters, that I was okay, to forget about it. But Dad knew me better than anyone, and he sat up with me all night, telling me stories about you from when you served with him. Telling me all the wonderful things about you that I didn’t know but somehow sensed anyway.”

“Your dad was a good man.”

“He was the best.” I sniffled again, tears starting to fall no matter how hard I tried to stop them. He slowly slid across the small space between our beds, until he was pressed up against me.

“I thought about you a lot,” he whispered, slipping under the covers so he could wrap his arms around me. “But I couldn’t come back, couldn’t be the kind of man you wanted and needed in your life. Not then.”

“But how could you know what I needed? I didn’t even know what I needed.”

“Well, they say that love is wasted on the young…and this is one of many examples of why they say it.”

“But we weren’t… Aren’t?” My voice was shaky, completely overwhelmed with emotions because I didn’t know what love felt like, but I was getting there.

“No, but whatever happened between us that night ten years ago is definitely special because it’s lasted more than a decade. Feelings like that don’t always have a label, but they should never be ignored.”

“Then why are we sleeping in separate beds and not making up for all that lost time?” I whispered, swiping at my tears and pulling away enough to look at him, despite the darkness.

“Because you mean a lot to me and I don’t want to cheapen it.”

“There wouldn’t be anything cheap about us making love.”

I turned so we were facing each other now, bodies close, eyes locked together. We lay there in the semidarkness not saying a word, just looking