Page 79 of This Loving Feeling (Mirror Lake)

“Night, buddy,” Lukas said, giving a thumbs-up from the doorway.

Sam walked out of the room and let Lukas close the door. Her eyes were stinging and she was overcome with a desperate need to hold on to this amazing man who was everything she’d ever wanted but who wasn’t at all. The least safe, the most unexpected, the one who had nothing from his past to recommend him as being the kind, loving person he was. Yet she felt freer and safer with him than she ever had before.

If Lukas asked her to go with him on the road, what would she do? She’d made the mistake of giving up her life for a man before, and had vowed never to do it again. She loved her job, she loved Mirror Lake. The thought of being transient, unsettled, of moving from city to city, without family, without friends ... it made her shudder. Yet if he left without her, he would take everything with him. Her heart, her soul. All of her.

She hadn’t even realized she’d been standing stock-still, staring out the sliding door. Lukas came up behind her and began nuzzling her neck in that special spot just above her collarbone, sending waves of heat radiating everywhere. She flicked off the pool lights, pretending some semblance of purpose. “Stay with me,” he whispered. “In my bed. All night.”

“That’s really funny,” she managed, “considering this is my place.” She tried to say more but it was so hard with him kissing her like that.

“But Stevie ...,” she said weakly. She wouldn’t want him to wake up and see them together. It would give him hope for a real family. She of all people understood that, having spent her entire childhood longing for one.

She turned in his arms so she could face Lukas. His gaze was solemn, heavy, like he was weighted down by similar thoughts like those she was having. She traced a finger along his dark brow, down the angle of his cheek. He hadn’t shaved today, and his stubble was a little rough and very, very sexy. She’d done such a good job so far of staying in the moment, but whispers of worry were clawing their way in, like tangled vines of ivy up brick.Memorize this face, a voice said. Every blessed, beautiful curve. Because how long would it be before he was gone?

He belonged to another world, one she couldn’t fit into, no matter how perfect their little scene of domestic bliss looked right now. The clock was ticking, each tiny movement eating away another second of their time together.

“Hey,” he said, cupping her cheek, a move that made her swallow hard to avoid tears. “We had a great day.”

It was great. Fantastic. She’d never had such a happy day, not since she was seven and her parents took her to Crash and Splash, until she’d eaten a hot dog and cotton candy before she went on the kiddie coaster and then threw up.

Too much happiness could do that to you. It was dangerous.

She hooked her arms around his lean waist. Felt the wonderful warmth of him next to her. “It was the best day,” she said determinedly.

“It’s not over yet,” he said with a soft smile. Then he kissed her, in that intense way of his she was coming to love. She threw herself into kissing him, determined to let passion take over and keep reality at bay.

As he took her hand and led her to bed, she noticed something wedged into the corner of the couch. She picked up the threadbare dusty blue ball.

“Well, I’ll be,” Lukas said.

Stevie hadn’t needed Bobby tonight.

Oh, heck. Leave it to that tangled ball of a mess to stir her emotions up all over again.

“Samantha.”

She was spreading the tattered thing out on the back of the couch as if it were five-hundred-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheet, smoothing it and folding and fretting with it.

He gathered up her hands and made her stop. “Samantha.”

She blinked back tears. “No, Lukas. I don’t want to talk about it. I want to focus on here and now. I don’t want to look down the road.”

“Samantha.”

She looked up. God, couldn’t she just have one happy day, one unmarred by thoughts she didn’t want to be thinking?

He kissed her knuckles, every blessed one. Then he murmured sweet words to her, telling her how much she meant to him, how happy she made him, how he’d missed her, how he’d always missed her.

But he didn’t use the L word. She wondered if he was avoiding it for the same reason she was. Because once you said it, it meant something. It meant they would have to face up to the impossible.

“We can work this out,” he said, shaking her a little until she was forced to look at him. His eyes slayed her. They told her he meant what he was saying. “I’m not letting you go.”

She surrendered. “Okay, Rock Star. Shut up and take me to your bed.”

He picked her up and carried her there, and did wonderful things to her until those pesky nagging voices really did shut up.

“Oh, hi Lukas,” Olivia said, greeting him at the door of her remodeled Victorian on the square as he came to pick up Stevie from a playdate. A week had passed since the donor dinner. A fabulous week where he and Sam had spent every possible minute together while not talking about the inevitable time when he would have to return to his work.

“Thanks for having Stevie over,” Lukas said.

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