“I won’t give up.”
“Then you should probably just leave.”
But she shook her head. “I won’t do that, either. One step at a time, remember?”
“Amanda, I told you—”
She stepped back up to him then. Settled her arms around him and lifted that sweet, infuriating face to him. Jake thought he could easily drown in that tide of bittersweet green. “I love you,” she said. “No matter what. I told you that. You won’t get any pity out of me, Jake Kendall, because you don’t need it. You won’t get any concessions, either, because I’ve been here before. I know what you’re doing and why. And just think of this when you’re thinking about what you want to do. Illiteracy is like alcoholism. Like an addiction. The longer you go, the more time and energy you spend on it, just to keep it a secret, until you don’t have the time or energy left for anything anymore. Until your whole life is wrapped up in trying to keep your secret. Well, somehow I’m going to change your mind. And when that happens, we’re going to work it through. Together.”
“Amanda, you don’t—”
She stopped him again. This time she kissed him. Reaching way up, on her toes, her hands curling into his hair, her lips hungry and sweet, that dress no more than a suspicion between them.
“Do you love me?” she asked.
“Amanda—”
She stopped him again. Again Jake lost control of his thoughts. He felt his own hands circle her, lift her so she could be closer, so he could taste her better.
“Do you love me?” she repeated on a whisper.
He had no answer but the truth. “Yes,” he grated against her soft, soft throat. “Yes, damn it, I love you.”
“Then don’t keep any more secrets from me,” she begged, eye to eye, heart to heart. “And I won’t keep any from you.”
“It’s not that easy, Amanda,” he insisted, his voice ragged with desperation, his hands clutching her to him while he could. “This isn’t a damn book where everything gets better just because you want it to.”
Her eyes softened into seduction and set him to trembling. “Nobody’s here,” she said rather than answer him. “Just us. That means that we could make love anywhere, and nobody’d know.”
“Amanda—”
“We could even make love down in the barn, on the hay. I’ve always wanted to do that, haven’t you?”
Jake finally set her back on her feet. “Stop it, Amanda. Stop it or I will.”
She lifted her face back to his again, rubbed up against him in that age-old invitation that no man properly knew how to refuse. “How, Jake? How do you intend to stop a woman who loves you so much she paid off all his hands to go in to see a movie so she could have you all to herself?”
His control shattered. His resolve vanished. Lost somewhere beyond her eyes, beyond the breath of her scent and the sweet weight of her body, was the knowledge that this couldn’t cure anything. This couldn’t keep her happy when she lost the ability to communicate to a man who couldn’t read the words she worked so hard to write. It couldn’t prevent the love from withering in her delectable, deadly eyes, couldn’t keep her tied to this ranch with him when she had the whole world to conquer.
It didn’t solve anything. But the minute Jake tasted the plum and ginger on Amanda’s mouth, it didn’t matter.
“You need a bigger couch,” Amanda murmured into Jake’s throat.
He didn’t move from where they’d ended up on the rug in front of the fireplace. “I need a less athletic woman,” he argued.
“Don’t be silly,” she disagreed, caressing the ribs she was sure were still sore from the move that had taken care of the size of the couch. “You just need more practice.”
She felt his groan all the way to her still-tingling toes. “If I practice anymore, I won’t have the energy left to get up on a horse.”
“A horse,” she mused, knowing what kind of reaction she’d get. “Now, there’s an idea.”
“Amanda,” he objected, right on cue, “I am not trying any calisthenics on a horse with you.”
She giggled. “Spoilsport.”
He ran slow fingers through her hair. Amanda closed her eyes, the sensation delicious and sad. She’d wanted so much from the conversation tonight, even knowing ahead of time how likely she was to get it. She’d wanted revelation, relief, action. Even wrapped in Jake’s arms, their bodies and minds as intimate as couples get, she’d known that there had been no relief. There had only been more pressure, and she didn’t know what to do about it. Except keep right on loving him. Without reservation, without condition. She’d lost Uncle Mick. She wasn’t going to give up on Jake. And in the meantime, she could do worse things than reinforce the fact that he was, no matter what, still the sexiest, strongest, most compelling man she’d ever met.
“I love you,” she whispered, letting her own fingers dance through the hair that crinkled across his chest. The view was wonderful, all the way down to his toes, the firelight bathing him in warmth, gilding muscle and tendon, washing over the planes of his sleek, hard body the way a new sun does the high meadow.
