Luke had been Gil’s friend. He would understand. He was perhaps one of the only people she knew who wouldn’t judge her for this truth.
She almost felt a sense of relief to make such an admission. Because, if she was honest with herself, she’d been angry with Arthur for weeks now, months. When they first married, he’d made all sorts of promises. And then he’d always had some sort of excuse to break them—or delay them. Yes, he’d usually delayed them. And she’d made excuse upon excuse for him as well, convincing herself she was being too demanding—too picky. They’d been in love and she was his wife! She wasn’t supposed to find fault with him so quickly.
Luke pulled the cart to a halt and turned to face her. “It’s alright to be angry. It doesn’t change who he is—that you loved him.”
She shook her head. “I married him. I’m supposed to be loyal to his memory, but now I don’t even know if that memory was real. I don’t even know what to feel anymore.” Had she been so blinded by her physical passion that she’d chosen not to see her husband’s flaws? Tears burned at the backs of her eyes. Tears of betrayal and guilt and confusion.
Luke lifted his hand, rough from the labor he’d finished over the past two weeks, and cradled the side of her face. “You’re allowed to feel whatever you want.”
She swallowed hard, a tumult of emotions clogging her throat at the look in his eyes. What if Arthur hadn’t lied to Luke and Luke had courted her first? “I’m not sure if I can trust my feelings.”
Which feelings was she talking about? The ones she had had for Arthur or the ones threatening to overflow now? Longings that had her staring into eyes the color of a brilliant sapphire, feeling lost but also very, very much at home.
His thumb moved in slow circles on her chin, and then just below her lips.
This close, she could make out each individual whisker on his jaw and noticed for the first time a white scar trailing from just below his lip to the edge of his chin.
This close, she recognized desire and affection in his steady gaze.
For what seemed like forever, neither of them moved. Time stood still as the world came to a halt, but for a bird singing nearby and the breeze rustling the leaves in a distant grove of trees. She held her breath, afraid to move. Afraid to do anything that would break this moment and send her spiraling back into her reality.
For a while now, perhaps even before Major Lucas Cockfield had arrived at her cottage with news of loss, her world had been almost tilted. Foggy, shaken. But here and now, everything felt crystal clear.
“Naomi,” he whispered as his face moved closer. “Stop me.”
But she didn’t want to stop him. Because this madness made sense. As uncertain as she was about everything else, right now she wanted nothing more than for Luke to kiss her.
His gaze flicked to her mouth and then back to her eyes, and she recognized that he was possibly as confused as she was.
Was this fate or was this a very bad decision? She’d wrestle with those questions later. As would he.
Of its own accord, her hand slid up his arm and reached around the back of his head. Beneath her fingers, his skin was rough along his throat and jaw, and then smooth and hot at the back of his neck.
“I don’t want to stop you,” she breathed.
Her words were enough.
He leaned forward and kissed her.
The kiss was soft, tentative almost, and yet he might as well have set a flint to dry tinder. The feelings she’d been fighting at night and sometimes when she watched him work surged from her core to her breasts and between her legs.
His kiss was exactly as she’d expected it to be but also so much more. Tender at first, gentle. His lips were firm though, and although his tongue slid along the seam of her mouth, he waited until hers parted in invitation before deepening the kiss.
Luke had inexplicably become her anchor, but they were both caught in forbidden waters.
She was newly widowed, swollen with another man’s baby.
And yet she could not deny the completion of his embrace, the authenticity of his affection.
A rumble hummed in his chest as he adjusted his head, drawing them closer together, heightening the intimacy between them.
She yearned for these feelings to go on forever. This connection. This…rightness.
Because once it was over, they would have to face the impossibility of it ever happening again. They’d have to acknowledge the kiss as nothing more than a mistake. Because where could they go from here?
Is it a mistake?
Or was it the best thing that could happen to her? She’d made so many mistakes in the past year. Mistakes that had cost her her family, her reputation.
