Too Hot to Handle (Romancing the Clarksons #1)(78)

“I’m sorry.” She spoke to Belmont because it was easiest and he’d never had the ability to pass judgment with his face. “I’m sorry…I know this was my idea. But I think I might have found a home with that man. The one I’m meant for.” Rita doubled over, tucking her face between her knees. “Oh, God, I feel like I’m dying. I hate it.”

Silence reigned for long moments before Aaron broke through. “It was Mom’s idea, Rita. That’s why we’re here.” He shifted, looking out the window. “You don’t have to take responsibility for it. We would have found our way here somehow, all right?” He reached over and nudged her shoulder. “And…if you finding a home is all that comes from this trip, it was worth it. I think maybe there’s more for us four on the road, but the road ends for you here. You and your flannel-wearing babies.”

With a watery laugh, Rita unbuckled her seat belt and lunged across the seat, throwing her arms around Aaron’s neck. “I’m sorry we were such assholes to each other.”

“Me too.” He planted a kiss on her forehead. “Although I maintain I was right most of the time.”

A jagged sound left Rita as she pulled back, turning to Peggy. “God, Peggy. About the apartment—”

“Don’t worry about it.” Peggy’s eyelashes were clumped together with dampness, beautiful despite her red nose and distressed expression. Her hands fluttered a moment, and in what looked like an effort to anchor them, she nodded toward the front passenger seat. “I’ll just have to convince Sage to move with me.”

A low growl from the driver’s seat raised everyone’s eyebrows, but Rita took the focus off her older brother by climbing out of the Suburban. After a moment of searching for her suitcase in the rear and coming up empty, Belmont’s shoulder brushed against hers, making her look up in confusion. “Where’s my suitcase?”

He glanced back toward Hurley. “I left it in the kitchen at Buried Treasure.”

Rita’s throat tugged with so much gravity she had to circle it with two hands. “What if I hadn’t figured it out?”

Her brother’s sigh joined forces with the desert wind to ruffle her hair. “Then we would’ve had to come back. Or Jasper would have brought it to you. And maybe by then you’d have figured it out.”

“Thank you,” Rita breathed, certain she couldn’t carry the weight of so much feeling. Loving her family, missing Jasper. Something had to give. Pressure was pushing her from the insides, expanding by the second. On impulse, she reached out and laid a hand on Belmont’s cheek. “You’re a great man, Belmont. A great one.”

Rita let her hand drop and stepped back, finding her siblings gathered around her. Sage, too. There they stood, on the side of the quiet road, draped in moonlight. And somehow it was the worst moment of her life, while doubling as the most important. The best. Surrounded by her past while the future lay a quarter mile away, a beacon glowing softly with subdued light. Rita hugged Peggy hard, still wishing like hell she’d gotten to the bottom of her sister’s heartache, but knowing Peggy had the inner strength to face it. Something she hadn’t been sure of before the trip started.

Rita embraced Sage, whispering in her ear, “Take care of my brother,” and then she stepped back, away from the group. Toward Hurley. “I’ll be on the beach New Year’s Day. One way or another, I’ll be there. That’s a promise.”

Sage gestured to the Suburban, still looking a little flustered from Rita’s show of affection. “Don’t you want us to drive you back to town?”

“No,” Rita started jogging backwards, taking one last look at her family. “I have to do this myself.”

“Rita, you failed gym class three times,” Aaron called. “You can’t run for shit.”

Her laughter rang out in the night as she turned and ran.

Toward Jasper. Toward her life.

*



Jasper would never know what made him stop outside Buried Treasure, halfway to his car. Maybe he was listening for the sound of the Suburban pulling out of town. Maybe he didn’t want to go home to an empty house just yet. Whatever the reason, Jasper paused at the edge of the parking lot, keys in hand, listening for something. When nothing presented itself but silence and the whispering of sand being carried from the desert to the asphalt, circling his feet, Jasper took another few steps toward the truck.

Those few steps gave him a view of the main road. Having grown up in Hurley, he knew every bump and lump of the town. So when something in the distance appeared to be getting larger, moving under streetlights and vanishing before reappearing again, his curiosity forced him toward it, needing to get a better look, an erratic pump beginning in his chest. His fingers loosened, his keys dropped to the ground, but taking his gaze off the approaching figure was impossible, so he kept walking. Walking down the center of the main road, like some kind of sleepwalking maniac. Sand crunched underneath his boots, less and less time passing in between the sounds. Was he running now? Yeah—yeah, he was running.

Rita. It was Rita. His heart had known it back in the parking lot, but his eyes had refused to accept the gift. He’d truly thought the woman couldn’t get any more beautiful to him, but watching her sprint toward him in the partially illuminated darkness, hair streaming out behind her, face broken into a smile—yeah, he changed his mind. She could get more beautiful. So beautiful he stumbled in the road and fell to his knees, opening his arms just in time for Rita to dive into them, knocking them both backwards.