“What?” she murmured and wound her arms around his neck. “What did you promise? I—I forgot.”
“I promise to treat you like a sex-crazed party animal.”
“Good.” She didn’t seem to realize, or care about, his mistake.
Wyatt wasn’t actually sure that it was a mistake, but he was too busy filling his hands with her silky red curls to analyze. Just the same, before she could protest, he closed his mouth over hers for their first real kiss. A deep, soul-searching kiss that he put everything he had into, knowing that—for this evening anyway—it was all he’d get from Annie.
He eased her flat up against the tree trunk and pressed his body into hers, absently noting how well her valleys fit his hills and vice versa. As he lay over her, he lowered his hands from where they’d been tangled in her hair and captured her wrists and pulled her arms up over her head.
She writhed beneath him, arching against him, returning his kiss with every bit of the passion he’d dreamed of from the moment he’d laid eyes on her. From deep in her throat, a whimper of sorts issued, and she melted against him, her head moving back and forth, seeking, searching for a better fit of her mouth under his.
He moved with her, accommodating, anticipating her every move, straining to become a single unit with her. He released her arms and she wound them at the back of his neck. His own hands settled at her jaw. Beneath his onslaught, Wyatt could feel her losing herself, becoming weightless, boneless, fearless. He knew because the same thing was happening to him.
It was a blissful feeling that he’d never experienced before. A feeling he never wanted to lose. A feeling of unity.
Of belonging.
This. This must be what love was all about, his muzzy mind reasoned, as he tore his mouth from hers just long enough to gasp for air and go back for more. No wonder so many people spent their lives searching for it. If this was at the end of the rainbow, count him in.
With his fingers, he traced the contours of her face, memorizing the feel of her cheeks, the union of their mouths, the way her fabulous hair tickled his cheeks, his neck. He breathed in the sea air, the scents of spring flowers, the velvety, cool darkness, the scent of Annie’s perfume mixed with spilled beer and old leather. He listened to the serenading crickets, the distant music and laughter of a party in progress and the footfalls of the occasional passerby. He committed each of these things to memory, realizing this was an experience he never wanted to forget.
What Wyatt hadn’t realized at the time was that this very kiss welded him to Annie Summers for the rest of his natural life.
Even after she married another guy and bore his sons.
Wyatt woke with a start, and for a moment, couldn’t remember where he was. Slowly reality began to dawn and he realized that he’d fallen asleep in his clothes. Again. And dreamed of Annie. Again.
Blearily, he rolled on his side and checked the clock. Three in the morning. The Hacienda de Alegria was wrapped in the kind of cottony, deep silence that only happened at that particular hour. He sat up and pulled off his T-shirt and flung it on the floor.
He’d been sweating.
Must have been some dream.
Right now, he could only recall fragments, but as usual, Annie played a starring role in his bed. He unzipped his jeans, eased them over his hips and kicked them off. Then, reaching for the light on his nightstand, he clicked the room into a blackness the color of the hole in his heart. Even now, fully awake, he could feel Annie’s body pressed against his.
How had he ever been stupid enough to let her go?
Back then, as a child of a broken home, he’d had something to prove, he guessed. Making it to the top was all-important.
When Annie had to leave school during her junior year and return home after her father had a debilitating stroke, their long-distance relationship had begun to suffer under the strain. She’d felt strongly about her family ties and decided that she was needed at home to help run the family business. It was a heartrending decision, but family had come first to Annie.
And at the time, being so young, he hadn’t understood the deeply precious gift that family could be. But Annie had. To Annie, family was everything.
Always.
Still.
And now, seven years later, Wyatt lived in regret.
His Annie had married someone else. Borne his children and was now his widow. She would probably always love the father of her sons and carry his insurmountable memory in her heart till the day she died.
He could have been the father of those children. Her one and only love. If only he hadn’t thrown it all away for a meaningless career that did not love him back at the end of the day.
Wyatt punched his pillow. He knew eating his heart out was fruitless, so he tried to envision Annie older now. Grayer. Life-ravaged. Age-spotted. Stoop-shouldered. Knock-kneed. Tongue-tied. Rotten-toothed.
Wyatt’s chuckle was grim.
Seeing Annie face to face again would no doubt be the only way he’d ever be able to fully purge her from his soul. To get on with his life. To realize that what they had was now dead. Over. Ancient history.
By now she was undoubtedly a battle-scarred old crone. The nagging, perpetually weary mother of two identical little demons. He was lucky to be footloose and fancy-free of that ugly scene.
And, if he repeated this mantra often enough, he might just start to believe it.
The next morning in the wee Saturday hours, after a quick discussion with Rand, Wyatt phoned the airline from his room and reserved the last seat on a flight leaving from San Francisco to Seattle. From Seattle he’d catch a commuter to Jackson Hole and be in Keyhole by early lunchtime. Then he called and arranged for a cab to meet him out front in fifteen minutes.
At least now he had a legitimate excuse for going to Keyhole without looking like the loser he feared Annie would see in him. He hoped she was still single. He guessed that she was probably was. He’d have called and asked before now, but until this deal with Emily came up, he hadn’t been able to figure out a way to barge back into her life. A life that seemed to have gone on quite happily without him. He had to give her credit. That was something he’d been unable to do.
Maybe this trip would give him a chance to apologize and maybe work on a sense of closure, if nothing else.
For once, Wyatt was glad that Lucy was a terminal matchmaker.
He could barely believe that within a matter of hours, he’d be in the same town as Annie. His gut clenched and his heart picked up speed at the thought. He and Rand had agreed to keep this trip low-key with the family. No need to risk Emily’s location by letting too many in on the secret.
Already, he’d repacked and made his excuses—an unexpected business appointment in the Midwest—to Liza, Nick and Joe, whom he’d found having coffee out by the pool. They’d all been disappointed, but understanding. Especially since he’d promised Liza a pound of flesh if he didn’t make it back in time for her wedding.
Nobody had a hard time believing that Wyatt put business first. He always had.
They had no way of knowing that he was a changed man. Or at the very least, an evolving man.
On his way out to await his cab, Wyatt breathed in all the familiar morning scents of Joe Colton’s “House of Joe.” Rich, aromatic coffee wafted in from the kitchen and a warm breeze carried the fragrance of blooming roses in from the courtyard where Nick and Liza were to be married next week. The bakers were working overtime, and though the fresh cinnamon rolls and coffee cakes smelled heavenly, Wyatt couldn’t eat. He was too keyed up over the thought of seeing Annie again.
Before he stepped out the front door, Wyatt heard voices coming from the parlor, just off the foyer. He paused to poke his head inside