Georgia
“Talk about swoon,” Hazel sighed.
“Yeah, that was a good part.” I switched the phone to my other ear and finished washing the dirt off my hands. The seedlings were coming along, and in just a few weeks, they’d be strong enough to be transplanted into the garden. Right in time for the weather to be kind enough to allow it.
“And holy wedding-night scene, Batman. I have to know, was that your gran? Or is there a little Noah in there, because it was so hot that I took myself down to Owen’s office—”
“Stop right there, because I do not need that mental picture the next time I go to the dentist.” I dried off my hands and tried not to think of exactly how much of that was Noah. Guess he’d set out to prove me wrong about the unsatisfying comment I’d made that day in the bookstore.
“Fine, but seriously. Hot.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said as the doorbell rang.
“You sure you don’t want to come over for dinner?” she asked as I walked through the hallway and into the foyer. “I hate the thought of you eating pizza on a night like tonight. You should be celebrating. Gran would have loved this book.”
“I’m fine, and yeah, she sure would have. Hold up, my pizza is here.” I swung open the door. My heart slammed to a standstill, then took off at a gallop.
“Georgia.” Noah stood in my doorway, glaring down at me with a smolder that instantly turned my mouth to ash.
“Hazel, I have to go.”
“Really? You won’t reconsider? Because we’d love to have you.” “Yeah, I’m sure. Noah’s here,” I said as casually as I could manage
given the fact that I couldn’t breathe. Three months of longing slammed
into me with the force of a wrecking ball.
“Oh, good. Ask him about the sex scene, would you?” she quipped. He arched a dark brow, obviously having heard her.
“Eh, I think that conversation might have to wait. He looks a little perturbed.” My grip tightened on the door handle simply to keep myself standing. Self-preservation demanded I look away from those dark brown eyes, but the laws of magnetics wouldn’t let me.
“Wait, you’re not kidding, are you?” Her voice lost all its humor. “Nope.”
“Bye!” She hung up, leaving me on my own, staring down the barrel of an incredibly annoyed Noah.
“Are you going to let me in?” he asked, tucking his thumbs into his pockets. It should have been criminal to look as good as he did.
“Are you going to yell at me?” I asked. “Yes.”
“Okay, then.” I stepped back as he walked in. I closed the door, then leaned back against it.
He pivoted in the entry, leaving only a few steps between us. That distance was too much and not enough all in the same breath.
“I thought you were going to call me when you got back,” I started weakly. I’d been prepared for a lot of things today, but seeing him wasn’t one of them, not that I was complaining.
He narrowed his eyes, then reached into his back pocket and whipped out his cell, pushing two buttons.
My phone rang.
“Are you kidding me?” I asked, spotting his name on the screen. He raised his phone to his ear in blatant challenge.
I rolled my eyes but answered it.
“Hi, Georgia,” he said, his voice dropping low and turning my insides to mush. “I’m back.”
“When did that happen?” I asked. My cheeks heated as I realized I was actually talking to him on the phone in the middle of my foyer.
He flat-out smirked.
“Ugh,” I groaned and we both holstered our phones in our back pockets. “Answer the question.”
“Eighteen hours ago,” he replied, shoving the sleeves of his sweater up his forearms. “Six of which I’ve slept. I spent one figuring out what you’d done, then a total of eleven booking a flight, getting to the airport, actually flying, renting a car, and driving all the way from Denver.”
“Fair enough.”
“Have you had enough time?” He stuck his thumbs in his pockets again. “Or would you still like me to leave you alone?”
“Me?” I squeaked. “You were the one who disappeared. I figured you’d be back in a week, maybe two, not six. You could have called and told me. Sent an update or a carrier pigeon. Something.”
“You told me you were taking time and to call when I got back. Those are some pretty specific instructions, Georgia, and it fucking killed me to follow them.”
“Oh.”
“Why did you change the ending of the book?” he asked abruptly.
Here we go. “Oh, right. That.” I folded my arms under my breasts, wishing I’d chosen something a little better than jeans and a long-sleeved tee. This conversation called for armor…or lingerie.
“Yes. That.” He lifted his brows. “Why did you change it?” “Because I love you!”
His eyes flared.
“Because I love you,” I repeated, this time managing not to yell. “And you were right about the ending. I was wrong. And I didn’t want to trash your career because I was being bitter and cold and sharp—”
He was on me before I finished the sentence, his body pressing mine against the door, his hands in my hair, his mouth kissing me into blissful oblivion.
God, I’d missed this—missed him. I kissed him back with everything I had, lacing my arms behind his neck as he picked me up, one hand under
each thigh. I locked my ankles at the small of his back. Closer. I needed to be closer.
Over and over, he took my mouth with deep, swirling strokes of his tongue, setting me on fire like a match dropped into a pool of gasoline— like a lightning strike to tinder.
“Wait,” he said against my mouth, then jerked back like I’d bitten him. “We can’t do this yet.” His chest heaved.
“What?” My feet found the floor, and a heartbeat later, he was in the center of the foyer with his hands laced over his head. “What are you doing?”
“This all went to shit before because I hid something from you.” “Awkward time to point that out, but okay.” I leaned back against the
door, struggling to catch my breath. He hadn’t been the only one to keep secrets. “I guess in the interest of full disclosure, I should tell you that I can have kids.”
“I thought…” His brow knit, two little lines appearing in his forehead. “Not that it matters, but that was never an issue for me. Biology isn’t the only way to parent.”
“Well, thank you. But I can. I just…didn’t want to have them with Damian, so I didn’t go off my birth control. Didn’t want to know what kind of mother I’d be in that situation. I also didn’t tell him that.”
“Huh. Okay. Well, I’ve spent the last six weeks between England and the Netherlands.” He fished a small, white envelope out of his front pocket.
“Doing book research. Adam told me.” This was what he’d stopped us for? We could have been naked by now, and he wanted to chat book research?
“Not exactly. I hired a deep-sea exploration company to try to locate Jameson’s plane off the last coordinates from the radio calls that day.”
“You what?”
“I think we found it last week, and by think, I mean I’m pretty damned sure, but there are official channels and a lot of red tape flying around. The Eagles didn’t transfer to the American military until September, and he
went down in June, so he was still RAF but an American citizen. No one quite agrees who has jurisdiction.” He turned the envelope over in his fingers.
“But you think you found him?” I asked quietly.
“Yes…and no.” He winced. “It’s a Spitfire, but the identifying markers on the tail have worn off and the wreckage was scattered.”
“Where?”
“Off the coast of the Netherlands. It’s…” He sighed. “It’s too deep to recover the entire wreck, but we sent an ROV down.” He walked slowly toward me. “We found an aluminum panel of the fuselage and what we think was the cockpit, but no…remains.”
“Oh.” I didn’t know whether to be relieved or devastated. To come so close, and yet still not know. “Then why do you think—”
Noah took my hand, palm up, and tipped the envelope into it. A gold ring slid from the paper and into my hand. It was still warm from Noah’s pocket. “Read the inscription.”
“J With love, S.” My throat tightened. “It’s his,” I whispered.
“I think so, too,” Noah agreed, his voice going rough. “And I’ll put it back if you want me to. We were looking for anything that might identify it, and it was right there…like it was waiting to be found, engraving and all. The team I hired said they’d never seen anything like it.”
My fingers closed over the band. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sure you’re getting a call this week. American. British. I’m not sure who at this point.” He swallowed. “That wasn’t the only reason I went to England. I know this might piss you off, and I don’t have any proof, but I don’t think…” He shook his head, then took a deep breath and started again. “I think the book—our book—was written by two separate people.”
“That’s because it was.” I smiled slowly, feeling the heavy metal of the wedding band against my palm.
Noah’s eyes widened and his lips parted.
“The oldest pages—the unedited original ones, were written by Scarlett
during the war.” I swallowed. “And the newer ones, the edits and additions…those were all made by—”
“Constance,” he guessed.
I nodded. “How did you know? I didn’t until about six weeks ago.” What had he seen that I hadn’t?
“The book tipped me off. I wouldn’t have figured it out if our book had been the last one she’d written…and not the first. Then, it was the marriage license. She told Damian it took her years to remarry because it didn’t feel like her first marriage was over, which was easily interpreted that she was still in love with Jameson…until I found the death certificate for Henry Wadsworth and the years matched up. It wasn’t enough—just a hunch, and I didn’t want to shatter your trust in her without having a damn good reason, but I decided to stop digging before anyone noticed.”
“Gran—Constance told me. She wrote it all down the year before she died and had it delivered. Once I read it, I called you, but you were already gone, so I called Adam.”
“And changed the end of the book.” I nodded.
“Because you love me.” His eyes searched mine.
“Because I love you, Noah. And because Gran had her happy ending in real life. She fought for it. She didn’t need you to craft it for her—she’d already earned it, already lived it. You gave Scarlett and Jameson the story they deserved. The crash, the evasion, the Dutch Resistance—all of it. You finished a story that fate had wrongfully cut short. Gran…she couldn’t do that. She left it unfinished because she couldn’t let them go—couldn’t let Scarlett go. You set them free.”
He cradled my face in his hands. “I would have done it for you. Would have given you whatever you wanted no matter what anyone else thought.”
“I know,” I whispered. “Because you love me.”
“Because I love you, Georgia, and I’m done living without you. Please don’t make me.”
I wound my arms around his neck and arched to brush my lips across
his. “Colorado or New York?”
“Autumn in New York. August and September, at least.” He smiled against my mouth. “Colorado winter, spring, and summer.”
“For the leaves?” I guessed, nipping his lower lip gently. “For the Mets.”
“Deal.”
