Jill Shalvis - Just Try Me…

“No. Yes,” he corrected when she whirled for the door. He caught her, barely, and turned her back to face him. “I’m ready for this, so ready.” He shook his head, trying to absorb it all. “It’s just that you showed up here, my single favorite walking/talking fantasy, and smiled at me, and from that second on, I lost my train of thought.”

She stared at him, and he had to let out a laugh. “Maybe…maybe you could say it again,” he said. “Maybe then it’d sink in.”

“Which part?”

“The L-word part.”

She stared at him, then laughed as a tear escaped. “That must have really thrown you, huh?” She slid her arms up around his neck and pressed close. “I meant it, Jared. I don’t know the how or the why of it, you with your gadgets and toys, and me with my wanderlust ways, but I love you.”

Tossing his glasses to his desk, he hauled her close. Lifting her up, he spun around. “I am never going to get tired of hearing that.” Setting her down, he cupped her face. “Say it again.”

She laughed, and it sounded far more free this time. “I love you, Jared Skye.”

“Oh, yeah, I could get very used to hearing that.”

“And besides the fact that it’s getting easier to say…” She slid her body against his suggestively. “It’s also a surprising aphrodisiac.”

“Is it?”

“Uh-huh.” She looked over his shoulder at his desk. “How strong is that thing, do you think?”

Laughing in relief, in joy, in overwhelming love, he backed her to it, then lifted her, setting her down next to his laptop. Putting his hands on her thighs, he opened them, then stepped in between, coming up flush to her body.

Ah, yeah, he’d missed this. So damned much. “Seems strong enough.”

She shoved his shirt up and put her lips to the spot right over his heart.

Undone, he held her close. “I’m thinking it’s plenty strong enough.”

“The desk?”

“You. Me. Us. All of it.”

Smiling, she pulled him down with her. “Well, then, what are we waiting for…?”

LILY SAT anxiously in her seat as the airplane taxied into the terminal. She was just coming back from a two-week backpacking trip guiding a private party through the Cascades. It’d been a wonderful, successful trek, her fourth since she’d begun working for Keith again, but all she could think about was getting back to Jared.

She’d missed him.

There would be no more trips for a while now, because she was going to be extremely busy for the next few months.

A wedding did that to a person.

She couldn’t wait. Grinning, she went into her backpack for some lip balm, and found the U.S. Weekly Review with the “Adrenaline Rush” article. She looked at the dog-eared page she’d read so long ago in her physical therapist’s office, the article that had changed her life. She fingered the Post-it note, and smiling, set the entire magazine down on the empty seat next to her. “Time to pass on the good luck, and change someone else’s destiny.”

With that, she stood and exited the plane, and walked right into Jared’s waiting arms.