Shannon left, and Jack and I were led through the now emptying foyer between Sheriff Graves and another officer, and then outside and into the back of a waiting black limousine.

I swallowed as I slid over on the cool leather seats, careful not to tear the beads on my dress. "Whoa. Where did you get this? A bit fancy for the Lowcountry isn't it?" I looked around the interior.

Jack laughed. "I wasn't sure if I'd need room for your friends on the ride back." He slid in next to me.

Sheriff Graves poked his head in. "I'll ride up front with the driver ... give you all some privacy on the way to the airport."

"Wait, what? Airport?" I stared at Jack as the sheriff closed the door.

"Don't be mad, okay?"

"I can promise you if you start any conversation with that phrase, it's a racing certainty I will be. What the h.e.l.l, Jack? Are you leaving already? I thought we were going to face this stuff together? It's not fair you won't be in Butler Cove if the Tom Price's of the world start coming to hara.s.s us. They'll only focus on me! Please don't. And stop smiling. I'm serious as a d.a.m.n heart attack right now."

My heart pounded and my cheeks throbbed. But unlike what usually caused these crazy physical reactions in the presence of Jack, this time I was mad.

Jack's smile broke free into a bellow of laughter.

Smacking his knee, I made to move across the vehicle to the bench seat.

He grabbed my wrist tightly.

"Let go," I whined.

"No." He laughed again. "Just let me explain." He leaned forward and pressed a b.u.t.ton. Then talked into the darkness. "Hey, can you drive around the island a few times? Our flight's not scheduled for over an hour, and Keri Ann needs to get changed."

"Sure thing," came a voice. "Overtime?"

Jack smiled. "Of course." He released the b.u.t.ton then he turned on a dim sidelight so we could see each other better. At least, I a.s.sumed that's why he did it. A John Legend song poured softly into the interior.

Smooth.

"Get changed?" I asked, belatedly recognizing a small duffel I'd bought for a camping trip to Hunting Island a few years back, sitting on the seat. "How did you get that?"

"Jazz might have been in on it ..." He winced.

My mouth dropped open.

Wait. "Our flight?"

He nodded. "I wasn't sure when the story was going to drop so I asked Jazz to help me in case you needed to get out of the spotlight at a moment's notice."

A fizz of nausea swirled low in my belly. "Where to? G.o.d, never mind. And what about them having to deal with it? Is this what you usually do? Of course it is. It's how I met you. Is this what ..." I swallowed. "I can't just leave! Is this how we'll have to be? How will I work, keep a job?"

Jack reached for my hand again, and I wrenched it free lurching away from him. "How will I go to school?" A strand of the dress caught and snapped, tiny jet beads poured down over my feet. "s.h.i.t." I tried to grab the strand and stop them, making it worse. Tears pooled in my eyes.

"It's okay, we'll fix it." Jack's hand closed over mine where I held the dress. And he moved to the edge of the seat opposite me, spreading his knees and leaning forward.

"Okay," he said gently. "Let go, I've got it." His hands took over from mine and tied a small loop knot in the strand, stopping the flow of beads. Then he reached down to the floor between his feet and carefully picked them all up. I reached down to help. "I've got it," he said again.

I watched him, looking at his bent head, his soft hair, his strong hands making sure he had every last one. I fought a battle with myself to reach out and touch him. I knew I was panicking again about being with him. I just couldn't see what our relationship would look like.

"You can't always swoop in and buy my art, you know." I cleared my throat. "And if I can't afford to go to school, or we lose the house, you can't step in and save me. You know that, right?"

He sighed. "It's just money, Keri Ann. Do you have any idea how much money I make? It's meaningless unless I do something meaningful with it."

"I can't, I won't owe you like that. We are not doing a repeat performance of that auction tonight, as fun as it was."

"You have too much pride, you know that? And you wouldn't be owing me. If you were my wife, for example, why would you owe me?"

The breath I was taking as he spoke stuttered and hiccupped in my chest. Shock flooded my system, making me lightheaded.

Jack continued picking up tiny beads. He transferred a handful into the inside breast pocket of his jacket.

I raised a trembling hand to my chest, putting my chin down. My flight response jumped to attention. We had to stop the car. He needed to take me home. My breathing picked up a panicked rate.

Then I felt his hand snake into the hair at my nape tilting my face up to look at him. "Just breathe, Keri Ann. It's going to be okay. We're going to figure it out. Take it one step at a time. But right now, until we know what the reaction to this story will be, we should go somewhere." He brushed his thumb over my bottom lip then dropped his hands down. "And maybe it will be nothing. And maybe I just want to be alone with you."

I stared into his deep, dark green eyes, my vision blurry. I needed to get back the feeling of calm I'd had earlier, when I felt such trust in him. I did trust him. I didn't want to leave him. But G.o.d, be his wife? I blew out a slow shuddering breath. We'd need to talk about that. A lot. Way, way in the future.

He watched me, waiting for my reaction. He seemed to know he just freaked the h.e.l.l out of me. And after an evening like the one we'd had, he couldn't blame me. But G.o.d, I wanted this man. I wanted him to look at me the way he did, forever.

Giving in finally to the urge to touch him, I reached forward, sliding my hands through his hair.

He stilled, closing his eyes.

Then he exhaled slowly and reached for my calves, lightly running a hand over my skin. His fingers worked the small buckle of my silver sandals at each ankle, and then slipped each heel off my feet.

Moving up my calves, he gathered my beaded dress up past my knees. "Kneel down," he murmured, leaning back and creating s.p.a.ce between us. His eyes were dark, somewhat unsure. "Let me help you get your dress off."

I did as he asked, kneeling between his dark suit-clad thighs, feeling the vibration of the car beneath me. He gingerly lifted the delicate beaded dress over my head leaving me in just the champagne-tone shift beneath and carefully laid the dress out on the long bench next to him.

My tears spilled over even while I smiled.

Jack's concerned face furrowed further. "s.h.i.t. I've got whiplash. Are you happy or sad right now? Please help me out here."

"G.o.d, both. I don't know." I laughed. "The things you do, the way you make me feel, it's incredible. You set my worries and fears alight until I feel they'll burn me alive. Then I find them floating away like sky lanterns. You asked me if I could be proud to be with you. It was never that I'm not proud of you. If anything it's the other way around, most of the time I don't understand why you want to be with me." I hiccupped.

"How can you not know?" He looked at me earnestly. "That's like asking why we breathe air. Because it's the way we were made. I'm telling you, that's how it is for me. The way I feel about you was never a decision. It just was. I was made to love you. I never fell, I was already there. From the very first moment."

He swiped a tear from my cheek. "Do you know that you're beautiful even when you're crying?"

If he kept talking like this, I would be a sobbing mess with my heart bleeding through my chest. "Just, just kiss me, Jack."

He smiled, and cupping my cheek, pulled my face toward his but stopped a breath away. "There was a time when you asked me not to."

"Yes, well. You certainly corrupted that girl."

He grinned.

Leaning forward, I ran my hand up his fabric covered thighs, feeling the hard tension under my fingers. Then I touched my lips to his.

I moved over his mouth gently, reveling in the feeling of his lips and responding with a jolt of arousal as his impatient tongue swept into me, his hand twisting into my hair, tugging the bun loose.

"You looked incredibly beautiful tonight, but I'm done with your hair being up," he whispered against my mouth. A hand swept down my spine and lower until it reached the back of my bare thigh. Then it inched back up under my slip. "And I kept imagining you were naked under those beads."

Heat sluiced through me in a wave, pooling into a heavy throb. My hands curled hard into his thighs.

"Is there any chance I corrupted you enough that you'd let me make love to you right now?" Jack rasped.

My heart pounded. "Now? Like right here?" I looked around at the dimly lit interior, my eyes wide.

He nodded then sat back.

"They'll hear."

"No, they won't."

His warm, rough hands slid my shift up, over my lace panties, to my waist. He hissed out a breath then pulled me up and astride his lap.

A nervous, p.r.i.c.kly heat swept over my skin and chest. I felt bare and exposed against his fully clothed body.

My nerves fizzled as I watched his face, saw the flush on his cheek bones, the flare of his nostrils, the tight set to his mouth. He looked at me like I was his end and his beginning.

I traced a finger down his neck and over his rough Adam's apple as it moved heavily. I undid a few more b.u.t.tons of his white shirt and slid my hands against his hard chest, feeling his heart matching my own in powerful thuds.

Jack simply watched me. Waiting.

Then I went straight for his buckle, undoing it with jerky movements.

"My left pocket," he whispered, his breathing labored as I touched him.

I nodded and my fingers shook as I felt around for the package. Jack stilled my hands and took over. Readying himself was far from a clinical reality to making love. It was the most erotic thing to watch. To know what we were about to do.

I shivered.

Then he sifted his hands through my hair, looking up at me. I held his gaze. "We don't have to do this. I don't want you to be nervous. Or feel self-conscious. We have forever, we don't need to-"

I lifted up, moved my panties aside, and eased down on him.

Jack let out a guttural roar from deep in his chest and surged up, clutching me. Wrapping his arms around me, his head against my neck, he pulled me so firmly down upon him, that I felt like my whole body would explode from the depth of him.

I gasped.

"Oh, G.o.d," he groaned against my skin, and his mouth opened on me.

Holding still, his body shuddered and trembled under my hands.

I rocked forward gently.

Then we moved. Both of us together. His fingers gripping my hips.

At one point he managed to work my slip up off over my head, and I tore the jacket back off his shoulders, spreading his shirt, needing to feel his skin against mine.

Looking up at me, he tilted his head as I clutched his shoulders then his hair, pulling it into disheveled tufts.

"I love you, Jack," I whispered, brokenly, something within me unwinding with the admission I'd never made out loud.

He squeezed his eyes closed a moment.

"I love you, Keri Ann. I love you so f.u.c.king much it's literally a physical ache in my chest." He breathed out, roughly. "Whatever you want, I'll do it. I'll give you whatever you need. My life. Forever."

"Jack." My eyes stung.

His hands at my hips dug in, and he rocked harder beneath me. I bit down on my lip to keep my reactions in check, watching his eyes as they glazed, darkened, clouded with pa.s.sion, pooled with emotion.

I was reading my future there.

I wanted to close my eyes and revel in the sensations that were racing through me, tightening in an ever increasing spiral, but I couldn't look away.

The sensations, they became bigger than us. And suddenly the wave was crashing over me, pulling me under and spinning me, tumbling me head over feet, over and over. I gasped, trying to find air, and my eyes finally squeezed shut under the onslaught so I could only feel Jack go rigid beneath me. Feel him cling to me like he would never let me go.

I had no idea where we were going. Tonight or tomorrow, or any day for the rest of my life. Or how we would manage all of our hopes and dreams.

Mine.

His.

Ours.

But we'd do it together.

Four years later ...

My heel is bouncing up and down nervously. I sit in my office next to the gla.s.s sliding doors that lead out to the patio and the ocean beyond, at a beautiful old desk Keri Ann found. The desk was hauled out of a boarding school refurbishment in England and is eerily similar to desks I'd sat at once, etched with names, dates, holes and fountain ink. Deep grooves probably carved with the sharp point of a school compa.s.s in a boring math gla.s.s, and some, I was sure, the result of an ink pen nib that probably didn't make it past that moment of its highest sacrifice. My favorite part of the desk were the initials carved with a date of 1961. An arrow pointed up to it with the words "my dad," and then whoever the boy was had crudely carved his own initials below with the date 1983.

We were in England three years ago meeting my mother when she found it.

I glance back up through the gla.s.s to where she is sitting on a lounger, soaking up some vitamin D from the winter sun and wrapped in a cream cashmere sweater I bought her and lied about how much it cost.

Keri Ann flips through each page. She hasn't looked up in three hours. At some point I know she'll need to move, stretch, eat, pee, I don't know. Her face has rippled from anguish to anger to tears, nervous lip-biting, and a small smile here and there. I wish I could exactly calculate which words she's reading that cause each of these emotions, but I can only guess by how far through the script she is. At one point she threw it down and lay her head back staring up into the sky. Now she's nearing the end.

I nearly went out earlier and asked her which part she was on, and if she was just bored and tired, or reacting to what she read. Managing to stop myself, I settled with pretending to work on something at the desk that had inspired me to finally finish what she was reading but stayed where I could see her.

Her hand moves up to her mouth and her eyes are watery. I lay down the pen I'm holding, since I'll probably break it if I don't, and wait. Abruptly, she flings the pages down, her eyes finding mine, and gets up from the lounger coming to stand at the door. I realize her cheeks are wet.

"He was such a monster," she whispers. "But you made me pity him." Her eyes are confused.

Nodding, I reach out a hand and she accepts it. I pull her gently inside so she stands between my knees.