The car turned into her driveway. Liz’s heart leaped. Brady! He was actually here. She grabbed her purse, threw it over her shoulder, and then dashed out of the house. Before Brady could even kill the engine or get out of the car, she was already sprinting around the front and pulling the door open. Liz ungracefully plopped down in the passenger seat and slammed the door.
“Hey,” she said breathlessly. She needed to play more tennis if a short sprint knocked the wind out of her. Or maybe it was Brady’s gorgeous face staring back at her.
His hair had grown out a bit since she had last seen him. He was probably due for a haircut, but it couldn’t look bad on him. His brown eyes were shadowed in the night. His full lips as tempting as ever. Liz was surprised to find him in casual clothes as well. It was after three in the morning, but still, this was Brady. He had on jeans, a dark fit T-shirt, and the Arc’teryx jacket he had worn that day at the diner when they had agreed to pursue this relationship. She just wanted to reach across the car and kiss the life out of him.
He shook his head at her breathless entrance. “Hey.”
“It’s good to see you,” she whispered, biting her lip.
Brady’s eyes roamed her face, down her body, and then back to the windshield. He shifted the car into reverse before backing out of her driveway. “I’m going to have a lot of people angry with me in the morning,” he said in response.
Liz didn’t know what she had been expecting. Here she was putting herself out there again, and she was dealing with the same cold Brady. She hoped that once they got wherever they were going, his ice would thaw.
“Does that mean we won’t be back in the morning?” Liz asked hopefully.
“We’ll see.”
Well, this was starting off promising.
“I . . . Look, Brady . . .”
“Let’s save the conversations for when we get to where we’re going,” Brady said.
“Okay,” she said softly. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see,” he told her. “You should try to nap now. It’ll be a while.”
Liz raised her eyebrows. Her interest was piqued. He was taking her somewhere far enough away that she could sleep on the drive. He must be trying to go somewhere that reporters wouldn’t think to find him . . . them. Yeah, if they were seen together tonight, the night the story broke, it wouldn’t be in anyone’s interest.
“All right,” she said before settling into her seat and turning her body to stare up at him. It had been so long since she had just been able to look at him that if she was going to be here for a while without talking, she was going to take advantage of the opportunity.
Twenty minutes into the drive her eyes started fluttering closed and she wasn’t sure if she was going to be able to hold on to consciousness for much longer.
“Brady,” she whispered into the silence. She moved her hand across the car and covered his with hers.
“I thought you were asleep.” But he didn’t move her hand away.
“I’m sorry.”
He sighed, lacing their fingers together. “I know. Go to sleep.”
The soft click of a door and the feel of her body being held by a rather strong, capable man woke Liz up. Then her mind latched on to what had happened. Brady. Brady was carrying her. Oh God, she could die happy. She must have been really out of it for her to sleep through him lifting her out of the car and carrying her nearly all the way inside.
“Mmm,” she groaned softly as she came to. She leaned into his body and wrapped her arms around his neck.
“Good morning,” he said, coming to a stopping point and setting her gently back onto her feet.
When she was set down, she wobbled slightly as she tried to wake up. Brady held her steady and she leaned forward against him.
“Good morning,” she murmured. All she wanted to do was rest her head against his chest, have him wrap his arms around her, and fall back asleep. She could not think of anything she would want to do more than that in this moment. Okay . . . maybe one thing.
“You look dead on your feet.”
“Just . . . tired,” she said through her yawn.
“I’ve no idea why. It’s only five in the morning.”
“Where are we?” she asked, looking around for the first time.
Liz took in her surroundings and her eyes lit up when she realized where they were. The lake house. She couldn’t believe he had brought her here. The last time had been Fourth of July weekend two summers ago. She only had good memories here. She hoped it stayed that way.
“I see you approve,” he said with a small smile. “Why don’t you camp out on the couch? I’m going to make a fire to try to heat this place up and then we can talk about why you called me.”
She nodded her head forlornly. She was not looking forward to this conversation. There was so much to say, and she didn’t know how much of it would make a difference. He obviously cared about her enough to leave everything behind and take her to the lake house to get away. But that didn’t mean that things would suddenly change between them . . . that everything would be better.
Fifteen minutes later a fire was roaring in the fireplace, and Brady dropped down into the seat next to her. Her eyes opened wide. She hadn’t even realized that they had been closed.
“You’re sleeping again on me, baby,” he said softly, brushing her hair out of her face.
Baby. He had called her baby. It was such a small gesture, and yet it meant so much. His touch sent butterflies through her stomach. She had craved it for so long. And it happened so unexpectedly. She had expected him to be angry, to yell at her. Yet here he was being gentle and caring and open. She wished that she knew what it all meant.
“Sorry. I’m so tired, but we need to have this conversation.”
“You know,” he said, taking her face in his hands and staring down at her deeply, “I’m not normally a talk-first-and-act-later kind of guy.”
Liz’s heart skipped a beat. Was he . . . ? No. He wasn’t suggesting . . . She opened and closed her mouth a few times, unable to come up with a response to that.
“I’m going to be really frank with you right now.” Liz licked her lips at Brady’s words, preparing for the worst. “I’m pissed at you. I’m so angry that it hurts me to look at you. Thinking about you is more painful than a sucker punch. You f**king train-wrecked through my life, and I can’t get rid of you. But at the same time, Liz, my entire body is aching to touch you. I just want to taste your lips and breathe you in, and bury myself inside of you. I feel like I’m going insane, that I’m splitting in two. Because everything tells me I should run headfirst in the opposite direction, but then I look at you, I hear your voice, I see those pleading blue eyes and I’m lost. I forget everything I should do, and I just know what I want to do.”