Page 52 of Five Alarm Love
Lou didn’t say a word, but as she watched him, her emotions flowed across her expression like fall leaves chasing each other down the trail, threatened to drive him to his knees.Her lower lip quivered, and a tear tracked from the inside of her nose down her cheek.In over twenty years, he had never seen her cry.
That one tear destroyed him.The ache deep in his chest sucked the wind out of him.
“Ah, Lou.You’re killing me.”
He wrapped her again in his arms and dropped more kisses on her forehead.Then he trailed kisses down her cheek until he tasted salt.An imaginary fist wrapped around his heart.He drifted his kisses lower, until their lips finally met.
Locked together.Warm and soft pressure.
Everything clicked into place.
The sound that she made was a half sigh, half sob, and a one-hundred percent gut punch.He wanted to be the guy to erase that sadness.Replace grief with hope.He needed to be enough to fill her future.
Could he be enough?
Tuli had his doubts but pushed them to the side.
Right now, he just wanted to be Lou’s shelter.Her lips parted on a soft sound, and he met her tongue with another scorching kiss.She tasted like blackberries and smelled like a cool fall afternoon.He snaked one arm more firmly around her lower back and buried his hand in her hair once again, tilting her face up to him.The kiss stoked a banked fire into a hungry flame.
This, right here.This was the moment that he had waited for his entire life.
He’d always known Lou was special, but he had no idea.The way they fit together, the way they kissed, the way they connected.He hadn’t been prepared for any of it.Yet he’d known it would be like this.They had always been friends.He’d known the person she was.
At the end of the day, deep down, he’d known that it would always be Lou.
Through the haze of kisses came a sniffling rumble and crackles nearby.He did a quick check-in on his stomach.Nope, not rumbling.There it was again.Low.Growling.Huffing.
Like a man buried in an avalanche and digging up to the surface, he pulled away, hauling in giant lungfuls of air.
Lou blinked, her warm brown eyes as glazed as he felt.
Another growlingwhuff.
Tuli gripped her arms.“Oh, shit.”
Chapter Seventeen
Lou’s world spun.She couldn’t breathe.
From the raw sadness of revealing her deepest secret to the heated honey kisses to the ice-water-shocking realization that she wanted more ofthiswith Tuli, she struggled to regain her balance.
Then… enter a fat brown bear, apparently still hungry, and possibly looking for one last big meal of delicious blackberries before heading into hibernation.
She focused in a hurry.Like most people living in this area, she knew how to handle herself around bears.
Step one.Don’t encounter them in the first place.They were way past that step.
She reached for the bear spray at her hip as the large bear appeared about ten yards up the narrow blackberry-picking trail.The ATVs were forty yards behind them.
Tuli reached an arm back for her and said in a low voice, “Grab your bucket and back up.I think we’ll make it to the ATVs.”
“Got it,” she murmured, her movements slow.
He remained in front of her, his pistol in his hand.
With her hand resting on his shoulder, they took careful steps backward until they emerged on the ATV trail.The bear tracked their movements, now clacking his jaws, along with making pulsing huffs.Sweat iced her neck.
Crap.
