him, she just wanted to rest her head on his shoulder.
She wanted to surrender to that strength. To the kindness she’d somehow found in the most unlikely of places. To his gentleness.
She stood there, rooted to the floor as he approached. She ought to run as fast as she could, but she couldn’t move.
And when he cupped her cheek in his hand, she leaned into the touch, which warmed her from the inside out as no blanket could.
When it finally arrived, his kiss was firm and unhurried. He lingered on her lips for the longest time before delving inside. It was a luscious kiss that made her bones go watery until he backed away and strung smaller kisses across her cheek and down into the hollow of her neck. The brush of beard against skin sent a cascade of shivers down her back.
The touch of his tongue along her collarbone was so deliciously warm that she let go of an inarticulate hum in the back of her throat and buried her nose in his damp hair, where the scent of vanilla and rain leaped from his too-warm skin.
But when she expected him to move on with his seduction, he backed up.
No! Don’t go. Come back to me. Finish the job. She wanted to scream the words at him, but his kiss had stolen her ability to think, to speak, to do anything but stand there and feel, while the wind battered the lighthouse and the rain drummed on the copper roof way overhead.
* * *
He stopped himself. She wasn’t like the other women in his life. The ones who had flocked to him before he’d been injured. Or like Marla, the woman he’d been engaged to when he’d wrecked the Ferrari.
Those women had come to him because he was a football star, because he had money. He’d never had to work to attract a woman. And even though he’d never been a player like some of his business partners, he’d never had to work at seduction.
And that was the thing. He didn’t want to seduce Jessica. God only knew, he was the last man on earth she would want to spend time with. No. He wanted her to come to him of her own accord.
It was a stupid thought. An impossible thought. But he was the champion of impossible thoughts these days. Impossible to think he could live out here alone when he’d just proved to himself that maybe he could.
Impossible to build a house like Granddad wanted, and yet Jessica had a vision that his grandfather would have loved. He would build his house. It wasn’t so impossible.
So why not think that this woman, who had good reason to blame him and everyone else at Rutledge High for a vicious rumor that had deeply hurt her, could find enough forgiveness to see him?
Not as some kind of monster. But as a man who was beginning to believe that she was the one. The one he’d always been meant to find. What he felt right now was nothing like he’d ever felt for Marla. Marla hadn’t been able to look at his scars. She’d walked away when he’d needed her most.
Jessica cocked her head, her gaze fixed on his left side. What was she thinking? Was she like Marla? Did she think he was a monster?
But then she did the unexpected. Jessica traced one of his scars with her finger, her touch electric as it slid over his damaged skin. He flinched back, not in physical pain, but in shock.
“What?” she whispered.
Don’t mock me, he wanted to say, but only the word “don’t” came out of his mouth.
“But they are part of you.”
“Not my better parts.”
She pulled her hand away, and for an instant he thought she might say something. He yearned for her to say anything that would signal that she wanted the same thing he did.
But she didn’t speak. She turned and paced with rigid shoulders back to the duffel bag. “I’m starved,” she said, pulling one of the Clif Bars from the sack.
“You want one?” She glanced over her shoulder.
“Yeah.” He was hungry, but not for food.
She tossed one of the bars in his direction. He caught it and then retreated to the bottom step, sinking down on the hard iron while he ate.
He waited, watching her fold the duffel into quarters and then use it to insulate her butt from the cold flagstone floor. Would she say anything about what had just happened?