When Stars Collide (Chicago Stars #9)(101)

He looked so sorry for her. She couldn’t take his pity. She blinked hard and headed for the door. “I understand. Really, I do. You care about me, but you don’t love me, and you especially don’t love my drama and my career. Just the idea of you being seen as Mr. Olivia Shore would be a humiliation for both of us.”

“So that’s it?” he said from behind her. “You’re bailing?”

She reached for the doorknob. She wouldn’t cry. Would. Not. Cry. “What else am I supposed to do?” she whispered. “Keep torturing both of us?”

His hand settled over hers on the knob. “Amneris fought for what she wanted.”

“And ended up killing him!”

“That’s opera for you.” His face was soft, inquisitive, achingly tender. “The night I pulled you out of the river—the night I thought you’d drowned. It was the worst moment of my life. It took you almost drowning for me to realize how important you are to me. How much more important you are than winning a ball game or being a starter. How much I love you.”

“You love me?” Her own words sounded as if they were coming from the far reaches of the orchestra hall.

“How could I not love you?” He searched her face as if he couldn’t get enough of it. “You’re everything. Smart and beautiful and funny and gifted. Sexy. God, are you sexy. When I couldn’t find you in the water, I wanted to die myself.” She’d worked so hard not to cry, and now he was the one with tears in his eyes. “I love you, Liv. I love you in more ways than I can count.”

She’d always known he had a sensitive heart, no matter how hard he tried to hide it. She lifted her hand and gently brushed her thumb along his cheekbone, catching a tear, not saying anything, listening.

He searched her face, taking in every detail. “I need to know I’ll always come first. And you need to know I’d never make you choose between me and your career.”

Anyone else might have been confused by this statement, but she understood, and it made her dizzy with love.

He took her hand and gently kissed the pulse point on the inside of her wrist. “No more deadlines, Liv, okay?”

“No more deadlines,” she whispered. “Ever.”

They kissed. A kiss she would remember forever. Deep and sweet and yearning. Everything a woman could want. The kind of kiss dreams were built on, that lives were built on. A kiss that was a forever pledge.

The sweetness of that kiss changed its timbre, becoming hot and fierce. They dragged each other into the bedroom, pulling at their clothes, at the bedcovers, desperate to seal the words they’d spoken with their bodies.

They came together ferociously—two athletes, champions in their own worlds, their bodies moving together, soaring together, hitting that perfect crescendo, that perfect rush. The perfect joining of body and soul.

*

Later, sated in each other’s arms, he brushed his lips across her hair. “We have a busy couple of years ahead of us.”

She ran her fingers across the delicious cording of his abdomen. “Yes, we do.”

“You’ve already signed contracts for the next two years, and I have two more years left on my own contract.” He stroked the curve of her hip. “I know what I’m going to do after that. I never thought I’d say this, but I can’t wait. Still, nothing is for sure. These next couple of years are going to be important ones for us. They’ll be our training camp.”

It was a perfect analogy. “The time when we work out the logistics. Find out how to make our lives fit together,” she said.

“We’ll make mistakes.” He took her hand and kissed her earlobe. “It’ll be trial and error.”

“It’ll be a mess.” She gave him a watery smile, not caring if he saw her tears, because they were happy ones. “We’ll need lots of open communication.”

“Something we’ve been good at up until these last few days.” He rose onto one elbow, gazing down at her. “Fortunately, we’re both disciplined. We know how to set goals and work toward meeting them.”

“We do,” she agreed, nuzzling his shoulder.

“You have Wednesday and Thursday off between performances next week. Does Thursday work for you?”

She lost herself admiring the dark arch of his eyebrows. “Thursday?”

“Or Wednesday if you’d rather. For us to get married.”

His words finally registered, and she shot up in bed, clutching the sheet to her chest. “You want to get married next week?”

He tugged the sheet from her hands. “Isn’t that what I said?”

“No, it’s not what you said! We were just talking about taking the next two years to figure things out.”

“Right.” He kissed the top of her breast. “After we get married, we’ll definitely need to figure things out.”

She grabbed for the sheet, launching into their first postcoital argument. “We’re not reckless people! We don’t just jump into something this big. We’re systematic. We take our time. Prepare.”

He laughed and pulled her back down beside him. “Liv, sweetheart, we’re already prepared. We know exactly what kind of mess we’re jumping into, and we also know that—with our work ethic and big egos—we’ll have to make it work because neither of us can handle failure.”