Freefall

Was it that obvious how much he dreaded dealing with the thousand details awaiting his attention? Her invitation held undeniable appeal. It was far too tempting.

He glanced at the small mountain range of paperwork. “Thanks, but I’ve got to put some order to at least some of this chaos by Monday when I’m meeting with Peter’s attorney.”

She straightened from the desk, her lithe body unfurling like one of Manny Reyes’s flowers. “Okay. But we’ll save some popcorn for you if you change your mind.”

To his vast relief, she headed for the door.

“Thanks,” he said before she reached it. “Oh, and I’m, uh, sorry for jumping on you like that earlier.”

Her eyebrows lifted a little at his apology, then she offered him another swift, dazzling smile and walked out.

He gazed at the closed door for a long time after she left. For a moment there, she had reminded him so painfully of the woman he had known a decade ago. The girl, really. She hadn’t been much more than that, barely twenty.

He had been twenty-four, new to the Coast Guard and stationed in Juneau, Alaska. His two-week furlough happened to coincide with Ali’s birth so he’d flown to the peninsula to meet his new niece and spend a few days at Seal Point.

He had expected a quiet, uneventful trip home.

Instead, he’d found Sophie and had fallen for her like a Sikorsky with a bent rotor.

He hadn’t expected the instant and fierce attraction between him and the sister of his kid brother’s sweet new wife. But she had been completely irresistible—fresh and exuberant and intoxicating.

He had fought his attraction to her for days, reluctant to start what he knew could only be a fling. What else could it have been? She lived in New York, he’d been stationed in Alaska. Besides the five thousand miles between them, he wasn’t looking for a relationship, especially not with a twenty-year-old kid just beginning to explore the world.

But then he’d kissed her on a dawn-drenched cliff overlooking the Pacific and all the arguments he had spent days constructing collapsed like a sandcastle at high tide.

He had fallen for her hard, hadn’t been able to help himself.

He thought she had returned his feelings. She had kissed him and laughed with him and shared her dreams, her soul, her body.

And then she had left him without a word, only hours after they made love for the first and only time.

Tom jerked his mind away from that particular memory, of silky skin and soft sighs and eager kisses. He didn’t need to dwell on something so transitory, so ephemeral.

Their moments together had been one tiny slice of time. Something that obviously had little meaning to her or she wouldn’t have walked away so abruptly or offered excuse after excuse not to talk to him when he tried to contact her after she returned to New York.

He should be doing his best to keep a safe emotional distance between them, not dredging through the murky waters of their past.

It wouldn’t be easy, he was very much afraid. Not when something about Sophie Beaumont still called to him as strongly as ever.

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