Authors: Rebecca E. Grant
Tags: #Romance, #Contemporary, #Music, #Celebrity, #Sensual
Naked Hope (39 page)
“We're going to the guesthouse,” he chanted, grazing her ear with his lips. “It overlooks the river. I asked Dad to light a fire earlier. It's very private,” he added, his eyes promising a thousand delights.
Much later, Jill wrested herself from Gavin's steamy embrace. “I believe,” she said, patting her hair into some semblance of order, “that you said you had a few things on your mind.”
Gavin shrugged. “Wouldn't you rather—” his hand travelled from her throat over the curve of her body.
Jill captured his hand. “You were quite clear that you wanted to talk,” she reminded him, feeling not at all stern.
He laughed and dropped a kiss to the hollow of her neck. “I do have something on my mind,” he admitted, and began kissing her again.
“Use your words, Gavin.”
He sighed and pulled her against him, wrapping his arms around her waist. “I was planning to ask you to marry me when we got to Whitesands Bay, but then I discovered Olivia. Would you like to know how that happened?”
She smiled. “Very much.”
Gavin tightened his arms around her as he warmed to his story. “Well, I was trying to sleep last night when this woman I know kept sending me texts. She got me so stirred up that I finally quit the idea of sleep, and went into the music hall. The time was after three, but Liv was there. My heart broke to see her just sitting at the piano. She wasn't playing. She wasn't doing anything. She just sat in the dark without making a sound. When I asked her if she was all right, she said, “Daddy, can't you hear it? I've been doing it for so long. Why can't you hear it?” He leaned his head against hers.
“Honestly, Jillian, I wondered if perhaps she was sleepwalking because she just kept repeating, “Daddy, can't you hear it?” So finally I told her, that maybe if she played for me one more time, I might be able to hear. I didn’t know what else to do.”
He locked his fingers with hers. “She played the same thing over and over. I didn't understand at all, but I listened because it seemed to be so important. I even went to the piano and began to mimic her, desperate to understand. Until at last, I heard. I couldn't believe it. I even wondered if I’d lost my mind, but with my fingers on the keys doing exactly what Liv did, I finally caught it.”
Gavin's eyes glowed in the firelight. “You should have been there. The moment I caught her melody and played it the way she meant it to be played, she stopped playing and her eyes filled with tears. But they were happy tears.”
His voice dropped and Jill had to strain to hear him. “When I saw those tears roll down her cheeks, I stopped playing and rocked her. I kept asking, ‘What’s wrong, Liv?’ And do you know what she said?”
Jill traced her fingers along the side of his face, feeling the rough of his beard. “Tell me.”
“She said, ‘That's it, Daddy. You finally heard me.’ She'd been hearing that melody over and over, and trying to recreate it for me. But I would never listen long enough. I couldn’t stand to listen…” Gavin stopped talking, lost in his thoughts.
Jill smoothed the slightly graying hair at his temples.
“Well, I knew there was no way we were leaving today—not with this discovery. When you didn’t answer your phone, I sent Baines.” He shook his head. “She may never do it again, I know that’s a possibility. But I can accept that now.”
Jill let out her breath, unaware that she’d been holding it, relieved to hear him say he could accept what had just happened as a one-time occurrence. He seemed not to notice.
“I keep thinking that if I could have made myself listen, I would have heard it sooner. She had the last movement inside her heart all this time. I just wasn’t able to hear it because I couldn’t stand to listen. I wasted so much time.”
“You are thick-headed,” Jill agreed pleasantly.
“Ah, but you love me, lass.”
“Well, I can be thick-headed, too.” She unbuttoned his shirt and traced her fingers across his chest. Silence settled around them broken only by the soft whine of the fire’s dying embers.
After awhile, he said, “Now about this business of marrying me…you never gave me your answer.”
“That’s because I don’t believe you’ve quite managed to ask me yet. You said you were going to ask me when we got to Whitesands Bay, which makes it future tense. I can’t answer what hasn’t yet been asked.”
His arms tightened around her. “Oh, you'll marry me all right. And the sooner, the better,” he added, planting infinite kisses across her face until their lips found each other.
A word about the author…
I've always believed that writing romance is a little like cooking. First, I like to lay my hero and heroine out gently on a well-oiled surface, take some seasoning up in my hands and smooth it into them until they're so flavorful they're ready to pop. Then I let them steep awhile in a nice marinade. When they're at their most succulent, sometimes I'll put them in a slow-cooking oven and turn them over and over, and other times I'll toss them on a blazing grill to sizzle. Either way, at some point in the story, they are going to devour each other!
After a career in higher education, I now spend most of my time writing, and some of my time as a “joy coach” helping people to savor their lives. As a long-time student of human behavior, and with the help of my writing crew (two cats and a dog), I love to create deeply romantic stories with a lot of sizzle because I am so wholly convinced that love is unstoppable and the human body divine!
Naked Hope
is my third contemporary romance.
Find Rebecca at:
Love is Unstoppable blog:
http://rebeccaegrant.wordpress.com/
Facebook author page:
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rebecca-E-Grant/133175380057229
She is also on Twitter, Goodreads, and LinkedIn.
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Also available from The Wild Rose Press, Inc.
Untangle My Heart by Maria K. Alexander
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