“Oh, thank you.” I turn to move out of his lap, but he holds me firm.
“And, more important, I wanted to talk to you about the other morning.”
“You did?”
He nods and watches me with sad eyes. Sad?
“Did you really only want a weekend fling, Grace? Is that all it was to you?”
I look down at my lap, but he tilts my chin back to meet my gaze. “No,” I whisper.
“Then why did you say that? Why didn’t you wake me and talk about where to take this next?”
“Because we didn’t make any promises to each other, Jacob, and we’d just barely met.”
“Yet I feel like you know me better than anyone else in my life.” His voice is calm and sure and unapologetic.
“You’re a British knight who owns half of that mountain, and I’m just a schoolteacher.”
“Say that about yourself again and I’ll take you over my knee, love. You’re not just anything.”
I gape at him and then frown in confusion. “I just don’t see how it can work.”
“Let’s look at it this way.” He kisses my fingers and instantly ignites sparks in my belly. I bite my lip and watch his eyes soften. “I’ve been quite miserable without you these past few days. I miss your laughter, your quick wit, and I miss sleeping next to you, sweet Grace. I don’t make a habit of spending the night with women, and I don’t want to spend the night with any woman but you.”
“I’ve missed you, too,” I admit softly. “I can’t concentrate, which is probably why I’ve been extra clumsy.” I comb my fingers through his hair. “I like you very much.”
“Well then, it seems to me that there’s no reason for us to not see each other. You can come to me on the weekends and I can come down here during the week when you’re in school.”
“You’d do that?”
“Until I talk you into moving in with me, absolutely.” He winks and then sobers. “We can take our time learning each other, darling. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Hmm . . . learning each other, you say.” I take his face in my hands and nuzzle his nose with mine. “What did you have in mind?”
“You want a demonstration?”
“Absolutely. Studies show that it’s easier to learn by doing than by telling. And I know from firsthand experience that you’re an excellent teacher.”
He grins wolfishly and lays me back on the couch.
“You’re wearing nothing but knickers under that shirt.”
“Indeed,” I reply with my best British accent imitation. “I am wearing knickers under this shirt. Should I be wearing trousers?”
“I love your smart mouth, darling.” He chuckles and pulls my panties down my hips, off my legs, and throws them onto the floor. “What’s under here?” He lifts my shirt to find me braless. “Were you in bed, my love?”
“I was napping.”
“Mmm . . .” He pulls a nipple into his mouth and gently sucks while tweaking the other between his fingers. My back arches up off the couch. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
“I’m not.”
He kisses up my neck as I feel him shifting, pulling something out of his wallet, and then tossing his wallet onto the floor.
“You’re wearing entirely too many clothes.”
“Maybe you should take them off for me.”
I tug the hem of his T-shirt up over his head and drop it over the edge of the couch before gliding my hands over every inch of smooth skin and hard muscle. “I love your body.”
He groans and buries his face in my neck, kissing and biting up to my ear.
“Take my trousers off, darling.”
I grin and pop the button on his jeans, slide my hands into his underwear, cup his ass in my hands, and push his pants down around his thighs. His cock springs free.
“Oh, someone’s happy to see me.”
“I’m bloody ecstatic to see you, love.”
I take the condom out of his hand and sheathe him myself, then take his heavy fullness into my hand and guide him to my opening.
“This has to be slow, Grace. You’re so fucking small. I couldn’t stand it if I hurt you.”
“You won’t hurt me, babe.”
He kisses me hard as he slowly pushes inside me. When he’s seated fully, he braces himself on his elbows at either side of my head, his hands bracing my head. He’s panting, doing his best not to move quite yet.
“You feel amazing, Grace.”
“God, so do you.” He begins to move, slowly at first, but before long his thrusts speed up. He hooks one of my legs over his shoulder, opening me up farther so he can go deeper, and we both sigh in pure bliss.
I feel myself contract around him as the energy makes its way through me. I tighten my grip on his shoulders and bite my lip as I come apart beneath him, rocking my hips quickly, insistently.
“Ah, Grace, you’re taking me with you, love. Fucking hell, I’m coming.” With a growl, he rests his forehead on mine and clenches his eyes shut as he finds his own release.
“I’m so happy that you came to find me, Jacob.”
“Always, darling.” He kisses my cheek and smiles down at me. “Shall we continue our lesson in the bedroom?”
“Aye, we shall.”
epilogue
Seven months later . . .
How was your last day of class, darling?” Jacob meets me outside of the lodge and hugs me as soon as I climb out of my new car. He said that I needed a new one, and surprised me with it last month.
I kept insisting the one I had was fine, but when the battery died for the fourth time, he insisted.
And I must admit, it’s not bad driving a Lexus. It’s quite nice, actually.
“It was . . . long.” I laugh and hug him back as he lifts me up off my feet and kisses me soundly. “I’m ready for summer.”
“Excellent. You can move in with me now.”
I shake my head and prop my hands on my hips, but he pretends he doesn’t see it and leads me through the lobby of the lodge, past a waving Jeanette, to his suite.
“We’ve talked about this, Jacob. I’m not ready to move in together. It’s only been seven months.”
“That’s plenty of time for me to know that I love you and want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want you to live up here with me.”
My heart stills and then picks up double time as it always does when he tells me he loves me. It never fails to surprise me.
“I love you, too, you know that.”
“Brilliant. I’ll arrange for the movers.”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
“Jesus, Gracie, just bloody marry me so we can move past this ridiculous argument and we can stop hopping from one house to the other every fucking night!”
I stand and stare at him and then laugh myself silly. “And I thought I was the klutz.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“That was the clumsiest marriage proposal I’ve ever heard!”
He swears under his breath, props his hands on his hips, and hangs his head before looking up at me. “You’re a stubborn woman.”
“How can you be so sure?” I ask softly.
“Sure about what?” He takes my hand and guides me into the living room, sits in a brown leather overstuffed chair, and tugs me into his lap. “Talk to me, Gracie.”
“How do you know for sure that I’m the one you want?”
“I’m not going to get angry about that statement because I know that your parents did a number on you and I love you so much it makes me ache. But I’ll not have you ever repeat that again, love. Do you think this happens to me every day?”
“I think that women—”
“Fuck the women, Grace. I haven’t looked at another woman since the day you fell at my feet and charmed me off of mine. I don’t give two shits about any other woman. It’s only you. And I’m telling you, I’m promising you, it will only ever be you.”
My eyes fill with tears at the fierce deter
mination in his face, in the way he’s holding me so tightly against him, as if I might jump up and run away.
“I love you so much that the thought of ever losing you brings me to my knees,” I whisper. “It scares me.”
“Ah, darling.” He kisses my temple and rests his forehead against my own. “You’re not going to lose me. I’m yours until my last breath, I promise you that.” He pushes his hand into his pocket and pulls out a ring, not in a box, just an amazing round solitaire the size of my fist. “I was going to do this in a more romantic setting, but it seems this is our moment. Please, Grace Elaine Douglas, will you do me the great honor of becoming my wife?”
He wipes the tears from my cheeks with his thumbs and waits patiently for my answer.
“Of course.”
“Thank Christ.” He slips the ring on my finger and lifts me off the chair, walking swiftly toward the bedroom.
“Where are you taking me?”
“I’m in the mood to demonstrate how much I love my new fiancée.” He grins down at me as he lays me on the bed.
“Jolly good!” I cry and laugh with him as he covers my body with his.
“You’ll get it eventually, love.”
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Kristen Proby is the New York Times bestselling author of the Love Under the Big Sky trilogy—Loving Cara, Seducing Lauren, and Falling for Jillian—and the self-published With Me in Seattle and Boudreaux series. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.
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Pocket Star Books
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2014 by Kristen Proby
Originally published in 2014 in the anthology Baby, It’s Cold Outside.
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This Pocket Star Books ebook edition November 2015
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Interior design by Leydiana Rodríguez-Ovalles
Cover design by Emma Van Deun
Cover photo © mjth Deposit Photos
ISBN 978-1-5011-2304-7
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Epilogue
About the Author
Kristen Proby, Saving Grace
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