Superb and Sexy (Sky High Air #3)(79)

“You never said it when I was buried inside you.”

“Which I plan to rectify ASAP.” She let out a breath, suddenly looking touchingly nervous. “What I’m trying to say is that we are a unit. And that I do love you. So much. And…”

Jesus, there was an and? He didn’t think he could take an and.

“And like you once said to me, I can’t keep walking away from anyone and everyone who cares about me. I always thought I had to be alone to feel safe and secure, but that plan has a fatal flaw, one I never saw coming.”

“Which is?”

“Alone isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Which means it’s time for a new plan, Brody.”

“And that is?” he barely managed when she paused.

“Staying.” She gnawed on her lower lip. “I thought maybe we could make this thing official. I don’t really know what your plans are regarding us and this whole unit thing, if you wanted us to date or something more…”

He found his voice. “Something more. Way more.”

“Me, too.” She nodded and still looking off center, swallowed hard. “More like…I do more.”

“Hang on.” He grabbed her. “Are you proposing?”

“Trying.” She gripped him tight. “Brody West, will you—”

“Yes.” He tugged her close. “Christ, yes.”

“I didn’t finish even asking you yet.”

“Yes to anything,” he vowed. “Everything. As long as it’s with you.”

You’ve got to get a

HOT DATE,

the latest from Amy Garvey,

new this month from Brava…

T his was absurd. She was just excited, a little nervous, high on possibility and the idea of a fresh start, even if she’d never imagined starting over back in quiet, boring little Wrightsville, the town she’d been dying to leave ever since she’d been old enough to understand that roads led away from it.

As she leaned against the VW, breathing in the air’s cool bite, she watched Nick direct the SUV around the tangled vehicles. She’d thought a lot about what moving home would be like, about old friends and second chances and possibilities she’d never considered.

But she’d never really thought about temptation, at least not with Nick Griffin in the same sentence.

By the time Nick moved the squad car to the shoulder, and started up the chugging, shuddering VW bus to move it, too, he’d recovered from most of his surprise.

Okay, maybe not most, but a lot. Some, at least. And then he stepped out of the ancient bus and turned around to look at Grace, leaning against a tree trunk on the riverbank, her dark curls blowing around her face and her eyes hidden behind a pair of sunglasses, a sucker punch of shock hit him in the gut all over again.

Grace Lamb was the last person he ever expected to see in Wrightsville apart from her obligatory Christmas visit to her dad. But here she was, live and in living color, the epitome of trouble on two legs.

Two legs, he realized, that had somehow gotten a lot longer in the years since he’d seen her last. Long, slim legs in faded jeans, with ridiculous bright pink boots on her feet.

He caught himself with a cough. Grace was his best friend Tommy’s little sister. She didn’t have…legs. Well, yeah, of course she had legs, but not…legs. Not like that, anyway. That had definitely changed sometime in the past couple of years.

Running a stop sign and smacking into a police car, though, that was the Grace he had always known.

“Impulsive” was her middle name. Along with “reckless,” “fearless,” and, well, “distracted by whatever shiny new thing came along.” Which wasn’t a single word, but whatever. It was still the truth.

Grace had once set her backyard on fire when she tried to start the grill to make lunch for her father. Another time she’d decided to try ice fishing on the pond, only to sink into the water once she started cutting through the pond’s frozen skin. She’d tried to go blond, but she’d used household bleach on her dark curls, nearly choking herself on the fumes in the process.

And that was all before she was eleven.

The girl was a walking disaster and always had been. Except she wasn’t a girl anymore, and judging by the suitcases and boxes he could see through the VW’s windows, she planned to be back in town for a while. Which was just frigging weird, because the one thing that Grace had always been was restless, most of all to get out of Wrightsville.

“Billy will be down any minute,” he said as he walked back to her.

She tilted her head, looking up at him quizzically. “Billy?”

“Down at the precinct,” Nick explained, settling his hips against the hood of the cruiser and crossing his arms over his chest. “I can’t write up my own report, since I was involved.”

“There’s going to be a report?” She took off her sunglasses and turned horrified brown eyes on him. “It’s just a little fender bender! Hardly worth mentioning, really. I can pay for the damage and no one even has to know…” She trailed off when he stared her down, arms still folded over his chest, immovable.

Leave it to Grace. Yeah, he’d taken care of the Great Microwave Disaster of 1988, and the time she’d lost the two Pomerians she was dog sitting, but this was a little different. It was an official police vehicle, not his own battered Jeep, and Grace, well…he shook his head. As far as he could tell, she had never really learned to anticipate consequences.