“I know she’s not pretty but she’s sound under the hood.”
“It’s the back end I was worried about.” Abruptly, the boy blushed and shut his mouth.
“What happened to the truck?” A.J. asked.
Devlin clapped a hand on the kid’s shoulder, slipping him a couple of dollars. “Not to worry. I’ll go get her myself.”
“Hey, thanks,” the boy said, looking at the cash. “But I didn’t earn this.”
“With that crowd in there”—Devlin nodded over his shoulders—“you most certainly will have by the end of the night.
The teenager looked happy as he rejoined his friends.
“What happened to the truck?” A.J. asked again.
“Nothing good.” Devlin shrugged and noted her shivering. “Should you go in? It’ll kill me but I can wait until tomorrow if it means you don’t get the flu.”
She shook her head, thinking she didn’t care if it was snowing and she was barefoot. She was determined to hear him out.
“Come on,” she said, and started down the driveway, heading in the general direction she’d seen the attendant go. Devlin caught up with her, slipped his jacket over her shoulders and fell into step at her side.
“It’s to the left,” he said as they approached the end of the driveway.
She turned blindly.
“No, your other left.”
She went the other way.
Down at the end of a long line of cars, standing out among the Mercedes and Jaguars, the truck was a workhorse in a field of Thoroughbreds. As Providence would have it, the thing had been parked right under a streetlamp and the added light wasn’t kind to its fading paint job or the recent damage.
Which was extensive, A.J. noted.
“Good Lord! What happened?” she exclaimed, going in for a closer look. Crushed and mangled as it was, she wondered why the bed was still attached to the cab. “You back into something? Like maybe a wrecking ball?”
“Run-in with a tree limb.”
“That fell out of the sky like a meteor!”
“Yeah, something like that,” Devlin muttered.
A.J. inspected the truck briefly.
“Those are beautiful earrings,” he remarked when she came back and stood in front of him.
“Thank you. They were a gift from my father.”
“They’re a magnificent color.” She watched as his hand reached out and caressed one of the stones. “Although I prefer the red in your hair.”
She warmed under the husky desire behind his words but remembered she should be wary. “Devlin, I—”
“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I’m so damned sorry. I can’t believe I yelled at you when you were injured and hurting. And then left, for chrissakes. I don’t blame you for being mad. I’ve thought about nothing except you for the last week, trying to come up with a rational explanation for my behavior, some way of explaining why I became so unglued. When I saw you go down, I was terrified, absolutely terrified. I had images of you in a hospital bed, never to get up again. In retrospect, that was highly unlikely but I wasn’t thinking clearly. When you were able to get to your feet, I thought, Okay, she’s all right. But then you got up on that stallion, who was halfway to insane and looking like he was going to jump out of his skin, and I felt like I was in a nightmare. It was awful, watching you hold yourself up by will alone, driving that panic-stricken animal over those jumps.”
He shook his head with regret. “When you wouldn’t go to the doctor, I lost it. I wanted to throttle you for not taking care of yourself, for making me feel so afraid. There was the woman I loved, nearly fainting from—”
“Wait a minute. What did you say?”
“I felt like I was in a nightmare—”
“No, no. After that.”
“I was feeling out of control.”
“A little further.”
“The woman I love—” Devlin halted, cocking his head to one side.
A.J. felt a glow all over her body.
“The woman I love.” He spoke the words slowly. “I said that. I really said that.”
“You seem surprised.” Her smile grew more radiant.
He laughed. “Only because it feels so natural. Considering how long it’s been since I said it, I would’ve assumed I’d be more rusty. Well, that and the fact that the last time I was talking to a horse.”
When he reached for her, she went into his arms.
“I really do love you,” he said urgently. “You’re everything to me. Whenever I look into your eyes, I can’t explain what happens. I just feel new.”
They were the words she’d wanted to hear from him, grounding and earth-shattering at the same time. And she knew that she loved him back. Fiercely.
Dropping his head down to hers, he murmured, “Can you forgive me?”
“Yes,” she said against his lips. “I think I can.”
Their mouths fused with a special softness, as if they were kissing for the first time, and she felt his fingers brush against the side of her neck tenderly. In that moment, she couldn’t remember the pain she’d been feeling or the separation that had torn them apart.
When they pulled back, she was smiling.
“If I thought it was going to get me this far, I would have fallen off that stallion on day one.”
The wind brushed against them.
“We need to get you out of the cold,” he said.
“And out of this dress.”
“Now, that’s a fine idea. Come home with me.”
“I want to.” She arched her br**sts against his chest. “You have no idea how much I want to.”
“So get into my chariot, sweet princess.”
“I can’t.” She sighed. “After my father’s birthday parties, he and I go into his study and light a candle for my mother. It’s their anniversary. They were married thirty-four years ago tonight.”
Devlin swallowed his frustration. “You can’t miss that.”
“I’ll come tomorrow morning.”
“For breakfast.”
“Maybe a little earlier.”
“Promise?”
His tongue slid into her mouth and she grabbed on to his shoulders. As his hands traveled down from her waist to cup her bu**ocks, he drew her against his lower body. When they finally parted, his eyes glittered in the moonlight.
“I better go,” he drawled, “before I can’t leave.”