Hot on the Trail. Vicki Tharp
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Название: Hot on the Trail
Автор: Vicki Tharp
Издательство: Ingram
Жанр: Короткие любовные романы
Серия: Lazy S Ranch
isbn: 9781516104529
isbn:
But what he wanted most was to kiss her.
* * * *
A light breeze cooled the skin on the back of Jenna’s neck. Beneath her feet, the ground shook with the canter strides of one of the newer mustangs, as Sidney worked it in the nearby round pen. Quinn leaned against the trailer they’d filled with freshly split logs, her wrist in his hand, his eyes on her lips, her heart on her sleeve.
She leaned into the impending kiss, the one she’d waited for a long time, the one she’d thought would never come. The one she didn’t deserve.
But that didn’t stop her from wanting his mouth on hers.
Closing her eyes, she waited for the contact—but it never came. She bit the inside of her lip to squash the sting behind her eyes. When she dared to look up at him, he threaded the fingers of one hand behind her neck, his thumb tracing the outline of her jaw.
He lowered his forehead to hers. “Took me a long time to get over you.”
“Are you?” She hated the weakness in her voice, the pitiful bud of hope waiting for the tiniest bit of reason to bloom.
Planting a long, chaste kiss on her forehead, he released her. “Yeah. I am.” What his words lacked in veracity, the shuttered expression on his face made up for. He was telling the truth.
“Great,” she said—with the same enthusiasm she’d used when the dentist had told her she had a cavity—and forced a smile.
She turned to head back to her office to finish up the calls.
“But, Jenn…” His words stopped her. She glanced at him over her shoulder. His hands rested on his hips, his broad chest expanding with a deep, ragged breath. “Doesn’t mean I don’t wish it had turned out different.”
“That’s rich.” She laughed, dark and angry, and faced him again. “Different how? Different in that you wished I had left my dreams behind for you, or different in that you wished you’d left your dreams behind for me? Or different in that you wished you’d never asked me to marry you in the first place?”
He stilled as he contemplated his answer. “I don’t know. I was naïve enough to think that what we had was something special, something rare. Something we would do whatever it took to fight for.”
“Is running away the way you fight for me, for us?”
“I didn’t run away. I changed duty stations to Okinawa. To a shit assignment that I didn’t want but gladly took because it would have allowed me to take you with me. A chance for us to be together.”
“Why didn’t you discuss your plans with me beforehand?” she asked.
“Probably for the same reason you didn’t discuss your plans with me.”
She shook her head, toeing a clod of dirt with the tip of her boot. Dink must have sensed her distress, because he slinked over to her side, resting his head against her leg. Reaching down, she scratched him under the chin. “Helping the veterans…it was a calling, something I had to do, here, with Mac and Boomer.”
“I get that, Jenn. I didn’t join the Marines to scratch an itch. I joined because, like you, it was something I had to do.”
“Another time, then. In another life. It might have worked out.”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe.”
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