Read Online You're Still the One by Janet Dailey, Elizabeth Bass, Cathy Lamb, Mary Carter - Free Book Online Page B

I loved marshmallows. He did not have towering trees around his home, and I was grateful for it.
    Beside me on the couch, he nodded. “I agree. I do not want to see wind, rain, thunder, or lightning in my living room. But I do like storms, like you. Remember that one in Yellowstone . . .”
    “We were in that tent that wouldn’t stay up, and the thunder and lightning were right overhead, the rain poured down like a river, we were soaked . . .”
    “And laughing . . .”
    We chatted on, as if all was well between us, as if I hadn’t darted out like my hair was on fire the other day, telling him we couldn’t see each other, and he hadn’t manhandled me into his truck. I’d even snatched up two of my apple pies when Jace came to pick me up. When I saw the smile on his face as he took them, it about melted my heart into a puddle. “Thanks, hon—” He stopped, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “Thanks, Allie. These are going to be delicious. I’ve missed your apple pies.”
    We drove through the pounding rain and buffeting winds, another lightning strike making the sky glow, and arrived three minutes later at his house. He put the pies on the counter. I cut one into slices, he got the plates, I got the forks, and he started a pot of coffee. We worked in familiar, happy tandem. I squashed down how much I liked the domesticity part of it.
    I heard about his day, and was fascinated by all he’d done in the emergency room, the people he’d met and helped, his compassion and empathy for them. He heard about mine. He asked questions about my past job, what I was thinking for the future. I told him about my latest crime thriller. He told me about a medical journal article he read. I told him about my short and careful bike ride. He told me to stay off my bike until I was healed, then he told me about a ride he’d been on. It was normal husband-wife talk. The comforting, familiar, happy sort.
    Sitting on the leather couch, about a foot away from Jace, the storm thundering, the fire burning, I knew I was in dangerous territory. Dangerous and lusty.
    Why had I agreed to come to his house when I could have climbed into my car and zipped to a hotel for fear of falling trees? Clearly I am a woman who likes emotional torture and invites sexual frustration into her life.
    I stared into the flames of the fire and tried to distract my traitorous heart, but it would not be tamed or lassoed up. Sex with Jace was like falling into heaven on a feather bed with candles all around . . .
    We were laughing about something and then . . . I don’t know who moved first. I may have been the guilty party. I probably was. In fact, it’s likely that it was me, sexually frustrated woman. When his lips came down on mine, I relaxed into him as if I’d kissed him an hour before and had been kissing him for years. His arms came around me and my arms linked around his neck and that kiss was . . . deep and delicious.
    It was exactly as it had been before, that blazing passion back, all consuming.
    It was the same as when we were in the lake at Yellowstone, body to body, magical and seductive, the constellations overhead.
    It was the same as when we held each other through long nights, talking and laughing inches apart, camping near a river.
    It was the same as when we kissed near a waterfall . . .
    But it was different, too. The years had passed, I had missed him to the core of who I am, and sheer, throbbing pain had come between us, which simply seemed to make things . . .
    . . . absolutely, positively out of control.
    I could not get enough of that man’s kisses. I could not stop my hands from wandering over familiar territory. Jace was thicker now, more muscled, all man. When he flipped me over onto the couch and came down between my legs, I wrapped them around his waist and tilted my head back so he could kiss my neck—and lower.
    We fell into our rhythm, our beat, as if the rhythm had never been lost, the beats never gone. I arched into his