Loving You Always (13 page)

“My divorce will be final in three months. You could’ve waited those three months.”

“Then send me away.”

His face was a blank sheet of paper with all his emotions written in invisible ink. She could feel the tension creeping into his shoulders as he waited for her response.

“What?” She blinked. “I, um, I just think…”

“Say it. Say, ‘Walsh, I don’t want you here. Go away.’”

Kerris closed her eyes, relishing the smell of him. She could still taste him on her tongue. They were easy words to say. What if he actually left? After having him again for one night, she couldn’t bear the thought of his absence, even for three months.

“Send me away.” His whispered words got lost in the hair he had loosened against her neck. He ran his tongue along the fragile whorls of her ear, nipping her earlobe. He licked the shallow indentation behind her ear, smiling when she couldn’t suppress a delighted shudder. “No?”

Kerris shook her head dazedly, leaning into him, plaiting her fingers with his. Her heart was a rocket in her chest, poised for takeoff. Fired and ready. She licked at the lips left dry by her passion-shallowed breaths. She looked up at him with helpless accusation, feeling like all her emotions were tangled up in him. He was wrapped around her, and she didn’t want to get away.

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

A smug smile played across his lips. His big hands came up on either side of her face. He kissed her, sipping from her like a well of fresh water. Holding her like she was glass in his hands, delicate and fragile, and he was afraid his love would break her.

“When tomorrow?” Walsh asked.

“I don’t know. I’m working at Déjà Vu all day. After work?”

“What time is that?”

“It’s ten to six.” She leaned into his palm cupping the side of her face.

“I’ll pick you up at six.” The strong planes of his face were barely revealed in the moonlight, but she could see the tinder in his eyes. Felt the match strike of desire catch and pop inside with an answering fire. “Pack a bag.”

Kerris’s heart went locomotive, pumping, puffing, and coming off the rails.

“Walsh, we can’t…We need to set some ground rules. I already feel guilty enough about how things happened.”

“Ground rules. Okay.” Walsh teased her lips with his breath. “We can kiss, right?”

Kerris’s brain fogged a little with the promise of his lips, but she nodded her head in jerks.

“And I can touch you here?” He skimmed a finger over her nipple through the cotton shirt.

Kerris stepped back, afraid if this went much further they’d end up dry humping against a tree.

“Everything but.” The words shot out of her mouth sharply, before she could round their edges.

Walsh rolled his eyes, but his smile stayed in place.

“I can do everything but, for now. I mean, you tortured me for the last year. I think I can last another three months.”

Kerris looked up at him, tiny firecrackers going off everywhere his hands had touched.

“And you’re fine with us not…well, with how I want to handle things. The fact that we can’t—”

“We won’t.” He leaned down, pressing his lips behind her ear and down her neck, leaving a wake of sparks. “God knows I want to, though.”

He pulled her closer, and feeling him hard and stiff against her softened the cartilage around her knees. She slumped a little and his fingers tightened on her elbows. She looked up and his green eyes, dark and hot and tender, were waiting for her.

“So tomorrow night, we are on our own. I love Mama Jess, Kerris, but I don’t need a chaperone.”

Kerris allowed her mouth a small grin.

“I just want us to have something we’ve never had,” Walsh said. “Time uninterrupted. Alone.”

“I know, Walsh, I just…”

“You trust me, Kerris?”

She always had. Almost from the beginning. Irrationally. Stupidly. Completely. With her secrets and, even though it wasn’t his to take, with her heart.

“Yes.”

“Good.” He bent to leave the words on her lips. “Then pack a bag.”

T
he tinkling bell above Déjà Vu’s door signaled someone had entered the shop. Kerris trapped a sigh behind her lips. She recited all the reasons she should be pleasant and patient with this final customer. She owned this place. She was responsible for its success. Over the last year, while Kerris healed, inside and out, Meredith and Mama Jess had borne more than their share of the work here. Kerris didn’t begrudge them this day off. So even though seeing Walsh tonight had dominated her thoughts all day, she needed to suck it up and be nice.

She closed the register drawer and looked up, the warmed-over smile freezing on her face when she saw her last “customer.”

“Trisha?”

Kerris had barely gotten the name out before Walsh’s assistant came behind the counter and pulled her into a perfume-scented hug.

“Kerris, you look awesome.” Trisha’s chocolaty eyes inspected Kerris from her Betty Boop T-shirt, her flared denim skirt, and up to the messy bun Kerris had pulled her hair into over the course of the day. “I mean, we have work to do, but I haven’t seen you since the accident and you’re in one piece, so you look awesome.”

“Trisha, thank you? I think? And what work? What are you doing here?”

“Walsh sent me.”

“From New York?”

“I flew in with him yesterday, yeah.” Trisha looked around the shop. “You done here? We need to get going.”

“Trisha, I hate to be slow, but what are you talking about? I thought Walsh was picking me up.”

“Not exactly.” Trisha ran a hand over her closely cropped burnished cap of hair. “We’re meeting him.”

“Okaaaaay.” Kerris gave the shop one last glance and rushed over to flip the sign on the door to
CLOSED
before anyone else showed up. “Just let me get my things together.”

Kerris grabbed her purse and the overnight bag she had promised Walsh she’d bring. Her fingers trembled around the handle. She couldn’t sleep with Walsh, not while she was married to Cam. As deeply as her feelings ran for him, Ms. Kris was right. She had compared Kerris to the river whose course, once set, couldn’t change. Kerris sometimes wasn’t sure what was right, but when she knew, she wouldn’t be swayed. And having sex with Cam’s best friend when their divorce wasn’t final? That wasn’t right. That could not happen.

“Okay, I’m ready.”

Kerris stepped back into the shop. Trisha was taking pictures with her phone of one of their display cases. She looked up, a grin creasing her golden brown cheeks.

“I forgot all about your jewelry.” Trisha took one more shot of the Riverstone Collection Kerris had started selling in the shop a few weeks ago. “I’m sending these pics to my friend in New York I told you about.”

“Really?” Kerris bit into the smile pulling at her lips. “Wow. Thanks.”

“I’d forgotten how unique your stuff is. She’ll flip.” Trisha slipped her phone into the leather clutch on the glass display case. “Now we really need to go.”

On the ride to wherever they were going, Trisha asked Kerris about her recovery from the accident and shed light on her part in getting Walsh to the hospital that night.

“I’m glad Meredith called me.” Trisha flicked her eyes away from the road to glance at Kerris in the passenger seat. “I’ve always known Walsh felt something for you.”

Kerris’s cheeks heated up but she refused to retreat; to run away from these feelings, from her past mistakes, from this conversation. Dr. Stein would be so proud.

“How did you know?”

“I caught him looking at your picture on his phone a few times. Plus, you were on a very short list of people Walsh always wanted to have access to him no matter what.” Trisha fixed her eyes on the road ahead. “So was Cam, of course. And I’ve seen how not having you both in his life has affected Walsh.”

The Mercedes purred along, adding no sound to the uncomfortable silence filling the car.

“Trisha, Cam and I—”

“I’m not judging you, Kerris. You’re separated, and if you ask me, based on what I’ve seen, this is how it should have always been.” Trisha pulled into a parking space and put the car in park. “Come on. We’re here.”

“Here” turned out to be an isolated section of riverbank, deserted except for a lone houseboat floating near the water’s edge.

“What’s going on?”

“I like you, Kerris, but you’re not worth losing my job.” Trisha zipped her mouth. “My lips are sealed. Come on. We have work to do.”

“What kind of work?”

Over the next hour, Kerris found out that beauty was indeed work. The houseboat might look unassuming from the outside, but it was tricked out with every modern convenience, including hardwood floors, gorgeous paneling, and a large bedroom suite.

One
bedroom suite.

As soon as she entered the room, her breath caught. Not from how luxuriously decorated the room was, but from the dress spread on the bed. It was so simple and perfect. Some mixture of blush and nude, the A-line minidress would not overwhelm her petite frame. Kerris picked it up and checked the tag. Stella McCartney and her size. She grinned and held the dress against her chest.

“You got my size right.”

“I didn’t. Walsh did.”

Kerris nearly dropped the dress, though her jaw did drop.

“Walsh chose this for me?”

“Yes. He has planned everything down to the last detail, so don’t thank the messenger.” Trish reached for the phone that was ringing in her purse. “Yes, we’re already onboard. Hurry. We’ve got plenty to do in just a little time.”

Kerris was admiring the nude heels on the floor in front of the bed when two girls walked in, loaded down with cases of products—makeup, conditioner, shampoo, wax, hair dryers, and flat irons. Trisha showed them through to the marble-tiled bathroom just off the bedroom.

“Most of your work will be done in here.” Trisha gave both girls a smile and extended her hand, palm up. “As we discussed, I’ll take your phones now. You’ll get them back once you’re done.”

Kerris gave Trisha a puzzled look.

“Can’t be too careful.” Trisha slipped both phones into the pockets of her linen slacks. “The tabloids are always looking for any little morsel about Walsh’s private life. You can understand why this…situation requires discretion.”

Because Walsh lived a life people wanted to know about. In Hong Kong one day and back in his four-million-dollar New York apartment the next. Kerris wondered for a moment at her own audacity to think she could do this. That she might be able to occupy this world with him. Her? No money? No parents? A past littered with dirty details she never wanted anyone digging into. Just as she was about to flee the houseboat and hitchhike home if she had to, Dr. Stein’s guidance reminded her of all the mistakes this kind of thinking had led her to make the first time.

That nagging voice in her head telling her she wasn’t good enough? Telling her TJ had ruined her for someone like Walsh? Telling her she should settle for something less because she was damaged goods?

That voice lied.

And the truth was in the mirror two hours later, shining from her eyes. The truth was she loved Walsh. That girl staring back at her with the freshly washed shiny curls and the high-end dress and the new manicure and everything waxed and plucked and exfoliated? She was the case, but the jewel was inside of her. The man she loved, loved her back. Thought of her as a miracle. And would go out of his way to make their first date this special.

“Thank you, ladies,” Trisha said to the beauty battalion, as Kerris had come to think of them. “Great work. You’ll get your phones once you’re back on dry land.”

“So what’s next?” Kerris hoped it involved Walsh, because as much as she had enjoyed the beauty regimen and the pretty clothes, he was what she wanted.

“I’m leaving and Walsh will take it from here.” Trisha gave the room one last glance, all business, but her eyes went personal when they landed on Kerris. “You look beautiful.”

“Thanks.” Kerris ran her eyes down the dress and heels, then touched the hair spilling over her shoulders and down her back. She looked back to Trisha, whose hand was already on the doorknob. “Thanks for everything.”

“Enjoy tonight. Come on out when you’re ready.”

Kerris stood in the middle of the room for a few moments, absorbing all that had happened so far.

“Come out and go where?” Kerris asked the empty room.

She opened the door, and her attention was immediately drawn to a crystal-encrusted card on the floor in the dimly lit hallway, the first in a trail of cards telling her exactly where to go. The first card said
FOLLOW
. Kerris saw a trail of glittering cards until the message
FOLLOW YOUR HEART TO ME
led her up a shallow flight of steps and out onto the upper deck.

“Looking for me?”

Kerris turned in the direction of the voice she could pick out from a million others. Walsh stood by a small round table positioned near the boat rail. Tall, with his dark hair ruffled by the slight breeze rolling in with the setting sun, flawlessly tailored jacket molded to his broad shoulders, linen shirt left open at his tanned throat, hands in his pockets. A casual stance, but there was nothing casual about his eyes. They were ravenous, eating up every detail the beauty battalion had so painstakingly attended to.

He extended a hand to her.

“Come here, Kerris.”

The words were spoken so softly she barely heard them over the water lapping up against the houseboat, but they commanded her. Those three words reached into her chest and pulled her to him by the heart. She was in his grip. Surely he knew that, but something in his eyes seemed to wonder if she would come.

With every step she took toward him, a certainty, just a seed before, went deep and rooted itself inside of her. She was his and he was hers. He had known it before she did. He had tried to tell her, but her fear, her self-doubt, her own insecurities, had sabotaged their first chance at happiness. Every step she took toward him was redemption, a declaration. A promise. Maybe she did still have some issues to work through about her mother, about TJ, about Amalie, about how she had mishandled things with Cam. The residue of those things might always coat her perspective, even if just a little. But Walsh was her bright future, and for once, she would grab what she truly wanted with both hands.

She didn’t stop when she was close. She walked right past the hand he held extended and into his arms. She slid her hands up his shoulders, standing on her toes until she could hook her elbows behind his neck. He wrapped his arms around her, suspending her, and her toes left the ground. She pulled back just far enough to whisper in his ear.

“I’m sorry it took me so long.”