“Now?”
“Oh, darlin’, you’re killin’ me.” He held a hand to his chest. “I need to stick around for a bit. We’ve got to make arrangements for the treasure. How ’bout I fly up over the weekend?”
“That’s four days away.”
She was adorable when she pouted, and he couldn’t stand it a second longer. He bent to claim her lips.
Her mouth was hot and open and eager as she went up on tiptoe to wrap her arms around his neck. He knew they must be a sight. A couple of folks of aparticular agemaking out on the sidewalk like teenagers. But he didn’t care.
He kissed her with every ounce of passion inside him. And when they finally pulled apart, he was breathing hard and glad his Hawaiian shirt was untucked and hiding what was happening in his shorts.
She rubbed her thumb over his bottom lip where some of her lip gloss had transferred. “Get your ass up to D.C., John.” She slanted him a seductive look. “I’ll be counting the hours until you do.”
When she turned to step into the Uber, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching for her. She came willingly back into his arms, but she pressed a finger over his mouth when he bent his head to kiss her again.
“You’ll make me miss my plane,” she scolded.
“Good.” He slid his hand down to the small of her back and pressed her forward so she could feel what she’d done to him, loving the way her eyelids lowered to half-mast when her pelvis bumped his erection. “Then you can help me deal with this.”
She giggled and the sound was like bubbles of joy that fizzed and popped in his ears. “Hold that thought for four days.”
“Fine.” He faked a pout. Or maybe it wasn’t fake. “Four days.”
After planting a quick kiss on his lips, she danced out of his embrace and slid into the car’s back seat. Before she closed the door, however, she leaned her head out and added, “I’m going to miss you, John.”
“Darlin’”—he shook his head—“you got no idea how much I’m goin’ to miss you.”
She blew him a kiss and then closed the door. He hated seeing her disappear behind the tinted glass. Hated worse watching the Uber driver make the gas pedal one with the floorboard as he sped out of the parking lot.
Four days.
John Anderson had waited sixty-five years for Dana Levine to come into his life. Surely he could wait four measly days to see her again. To look into her smiling blue eyes again. To make long, slow, passionate love to her again.
Chapter 33
3:31 PM...
Even this far into summer, the tops of the mountains to the west were still crowned with caps of white snow. Doc watched as a golden eagle circled one of the lower peaks. The raptor’s lazy, relaxed flight stood in stark contrast to the cauldron of emotions roiling inside him.
“The night I met her, I didn’t know who she was or where she was from. But she felt instantly familiar to me. Like I’d known her all my life.” He swallowed and turned his eyes to the nearest pasture, where a herd of Angus cattle munched on sweet green grass shoots. “And I think maybe I’ve been holding that against her ever since. Because the more I got to know her, the more I was unable to shake that sense of familiarity. And the more familiar she became, the further away I felt from Lily.” Tears clogged his throat. “Ihatethat feeling, Mom. I don’t want to lose Lily. I still love her.”
They were sitting on the front porch steps of the ranch house she shared with Randall Thorpe—Doc didn’t think of the man as his stepfather; didn’t reckon he ever would. And he watched as his mother tucked the ends of her long sundress tighter around her ankles when the soft-smelling breeze tried to push it up her legs. She was staring out at the fields, same as he’d been. But her eyes seemed to be focused on the middle distance.
“For years after your father died, he was the first thing I’d see in my mind’s eye when I laid my head on my pillow at night. He was the first person I wanted to run to anytime something sad or scary happened. And when I heard a funny story, he was certainly the first person I wanted to tell.” Her voice was low and gentle when she spoke. “And then, one day, he was the second person I thought about at night. And Randall was the one I clung to when I was sad or scared. And all my funny stories got shared with my friends.” She blew out a ragged breath. “On that day, I felt like I’d lost your father all over again.”
Doc jerked back his chin, and she caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. When she turned to him, her smile was melancholy. “What? You think just because I married Randall that I fell out of love with your father?”
“I—” he started and then immediately stopped. All he could manage was a confused shake of his head.
“When a person loses someone they love with their whole heart, it leaves an awful emptiness inside them,” his mother said. He thought of the yawning void at his center and nodded in understanding. “And sometimes a person’s instinct is to fill that emptiness with something dark. Like bitterness or loneliness.”
Doc had certainly been lonely since Lily’s death. Had he been bitter too?
If his treatment of Cami was anything to go by, he was afraid the answer to that question might be a resoundingyes.
“Randall and I decided we wanted to fill our voids with love instead,” she went on.
“Just like that?” Doc pulverized the end of his toothpick with his teeth. “You could fall in love again just like that? Buthow?”
