Page 130 of Never Forever

Matt was downstairs, and as soon as I opened the door he slipped inside. “I was going to let you sleep, but then they started taking pictures.”

A few die hard paparazzi had camped out at the edge of the property, but I could see the sky turning a dark dull gray and the rain was starting to fall. They wouldn’t last long. And I wasn’t nearly as exciting now that my hair looked normal.

Matt shut the door and looked out the side window at the paparazzi holding their cameras over the gate trying to get a shot.

“How in the world do you get used to that?”

“You just do,” I said. “So, how bad is this storm going to get?”

“You really don’t look at the app?”

“I’m asking you,” I said. “You’re my app.”

He smiled, still looking out the window. “Bad. Heavy winds, high tide and two to six inches of rain. Ferry won’t be running in this either.”

“Seriously?” I asked.

“I don’t make the weather, I just report it.”

“You mean we’re really stuck here on this island?” I asked.

“Unless you want to leave right now, we’re not going anywhere until it passes. Could be a day, maybe two. Who knows?”

I didn’t want to leave my island. Not this morning and not now. It was just wind and rain, what’s the worst that could happen?

Actually, Matt. Matt was probably the worst thing that could happen.

He had changed out of his uniform into a pair of grey joggers and a sweatshirt, like a man who was looking to be comfortable.

Matt Sullivan looked good in anything. It was true. I’d never seen him in a tux, but I imagine he’d rock it. But the way this man looked in sweat pants and a sweat shirt was indecent.

Unfair.

It had been my Achilles’ heel years ago, and now, pregnant and alone with him in this house with one air mattress and a North Atlantic storm building, it was even worse.

That hard clench of need. That sudden desire. It came back.

With a vengeance.

“Don’t get any ideas,” I warned him, when I was getting all the ideas.

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “I brought more books and food.”

“Don’t you have to take the ferry back?”

He shook his head. “Carlos is finishing for the day. He’s taking those paps home. He’ll give them a bouncy ride in this weather.”

“I hope Carlos is getting paid overtime for all the work you’re throwing his way,” I said it as a joke, but he turned and looked at me seriously.

“I’ve never had anything in my life more important than the job,” he said. “Now I do.”

“You mean the baby.”

“I mean you.”

I swallowed and looked down at everything he’d brought with him. A back pack. A sleeping bag and another bag of food from Pappas’. “What’s in the bag?”

“I think you know what’s in the bag,” he said with a knowing smile.

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