Fly Me Home: Home is Where the Heat Is, Book 4 (12 page)

She sat down beside him, her gaze steady. “I didn’t expect to hear from you. Honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

Ian hated the lack of emotion in her voice. Where was the spark, her smile, the light in her eyes? Up close, he noticed the dark circles under her eyes. He hoped she wasn’t suffering the same sleep, or lack thereof, issues he’d been experiencing, but there was a small part of him that hoped being away from him had affected her even fractionally as deeply as it had him.

“I should have,” he stated. It was a no-brainer. He should have known it from the moment he’d flown away. “I just didn’t know how, or why I should.”

“And now?” She shifted to sit with one leg crooked up next to him. The fact that she didn’t seem to be suffering any nervousness at all really bothered him. It shouldn’t, considering how upfront and honest she’d been from day one. But it did.

“Now?”

She waited.

“I owe you. Big time. Cash will call you to set up a time to do an interview.” Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out the small box and shifted it back and forth between his fingers. “And, well, I guess I just had to take this chance. Elizabeth, my entire life has been carefully crafted to make sure I didn’t get hurt. Friends, family… The last thing I wanted was to be left behind, forgotten or hurt again. I’d gone down that road. And I made my choices based on protecting myself. Then I had to bring you home. Cain left… Everything was empty.”

He shoved the box into her hands. It was small and insignificant in the grand scheme, but he hoped it would portray the extent of love, happiness and gratitude he felt for what she’d given him, and how he planned to think of her in a future he didn’t know she’d accept.

She sat back, her eyes wide. “What’s this?”

“Open it,” he pleaded. He didn’t have the right words, but he was going to try. “It’s the only way I can think to show you that I love you, that I need you, and that every moment we shared, and every word you ever said to me, stuck even when I was focused on not getting attached.”

“Ian.”

He squeezed her hands around the box. “Please. I can’t tell you how hard this is for me.”

She nodded and pulled the ribbon free. The box was tiny, and as her hands shook, he suddenly realized what she might think it held. A promise of the future. A promise of forever…

The small box held all that, but not in the way she might think. She pulled the top free as he said, “Wait. It’s not what you think.”

But it was open. It was out there.

Pulling the small Delhi magnet from the box, she looked up at him with bright, tear-rimmed eyes. “You remembered?”

Her arms went around him, tears pouring down her sun-kissed cheeks. The magnet had cost him a flight and a whopping three hundred rupees. “It was five dollars, Elizabeth. Nothing too special.”

“It is special, Ian.” She sat back, brushing the tears from her eyes. “It’s more amazing than any dozen roses, trips around the world or anything money could buy. You remembered what was important to me. And I love you too.”

Really? Just like that?

He shouldn’t be surprised. It was his Elizabeth. She was simple and easy, and took in every detail around her to find the good in life. “You know,” he said, pulling her into his arms, “I have no idea when I fell in love with you, but I’ve spent every day since wondering how I could have let you go, and how I was going to convince you to give us a chance.”

“I don’t know how we’ll do it. Maybe fly around the world and come back here until we have to fly off again? I don’t have an answer, but I want to try. I want you.” She stroked his goatee, her eyes bright. “All you had to do was come back. I’ll give anything, go anywhere and come back. As long as I’m with you, and you’re happy, and you know me this way, we can make this work.”

“I can promise to try to do all that.” He was blown away, and shaken, and euphoric. “I want you to be happy, and I swear to do my best to keep you that way.”

She pulled him close and pressed a sinfully sweet kiss over his lips. “That’s all I want. You and your sweet attempts.”

Mama hollered out then. “Ya’ll gonna be at it much longer?
Jeopardy
’s almost over and I need help. You got my stories on that fancy recordin’ thing, but I can’t remember how to watch ’em.”

Elizabeth laughed, her tears and smile enough to make him feel ready to burst. “Oh, Mama.”

Ian pulled her onto his lap. “Say you love me, and we can make this work.”

“I love you.” Her hand moved down his cheek, her eyes revealing the truth. “And we will find the right balance.”

He was a lucky SOB. “I love you too, Elizabeth.”

About the Author

Candi Wall is probably the only person whose real name is more epic than any pseudonym she could have come up with—even as an author! She writes because the voices in her head have to come out somehow. Animal rescue-ess, mother of four, and soccer mom by day, she spends her free time writing—often on napkins at kids’ games because she never knows when a juicy story will reveal its delicious self. She once wrote a sex scene at a wrestling meet. Shhhhhh!

Her favorite sayings are, “There is no greater seduction than the written word…” and “What’s sexy? It’s that short, staggered breath the second before your lips meet in a first kiss…”

You can find her on:

Musetracks -
musetracks.wordpress.com

Twitter -
www.twitter.com/candiwall

Facebook -
www.facebook.com/candi.wall

and
www.CandiWallWrites.com
.

Look for these titles by Candi Wall

Now Available:

Primitive Nights

Changing Tides

Stay

Home Is Where The Heat Is

Bring Me Home

Lead Me Home

Take Me Home

She’s beautiful. Sexy. Important. Now all he has to do is make her believe it.

Home is Where the Heat Is, Book 3

Rude and fake people aren’t Cash Dillon’s style, and there are more of them here in New York than the entire population of his Texas hometown. Once this quick modeling job is done, he’s gettin’ the hell outta Dodge—with a fat paycheck to help take care of his Gram. Until the magazine’s sweet, curvy assistant editor crosses his path and blows him away.

The moment Cash turns his sinfully erotic gaze in her direction, Shawna Little sternly tells herself to ignore temptation and keep her mind firmly on climbing the career ladder at
StyleU
magazine. Attention from someone as smoking hot as Cash isn’t easy for her to accept, especially since her own curvetastic body is constantly surrounded by gorgeous, stick-thin models.

When she and Cash touch, her body issues, her career plans—even her future—are almost lost in a cloud of steam. But can she trust Cash’s insistence that the hot-as-hell attraction between them is honest, real…and forever?

Warning: Contains one sexy cowboy looking for a real woman with a real heart, one with a taste for firebrand bedroom heat. And this cowboy won’t settle for anything fake. Including fake orgasms.

He knows just how to tame this filly, but it’ll be one wild ride.

Home is Where the Heat Is,
Book 2

As far as Chloe Garrison is concerned, Nick Westing was carved by the gods. Her one and only plan while visiting her best friend in Texas: get that sexy cowboy into her bed as often as possible until it’s time to return to New York.

After a whirlwind week she slips away, thinking it best to make a clean break. Except she can’t get Nick out of her head. And when he unexpectedly walks into her office, her first instinct is to find her defenses before she loses her panties.

Nick jumped at the chance to accompany his brother to New York for a photo shoot, but now that he’s here, he’s pissed. Seems Chloe is doing everything in her power to ignore him. The tender part of him understands her need for space.

The wilder side of him teases and torments her until she finally admits she’s missed him. Even though she walks away, in his book it’s a win. Because one way or another, he’s going to convince her they belong together.

Warning: Contains a commitment-phobic city girl who wants her cowboy—and hates that she wants him. And a hot, sweet-as-sin Texan with the patience and skill to show her she belongs by his side, in his world, and in his bed.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

11821 Mason Montgomery Road Suite 4B

Cincinnati OH 45249

Fly Me Home

Copyright © 2016 by Candi Wall

ISBN: 978-1-61923-296-9

Edited by Jennifer Miller

Cover by Erin Dameron-Hill

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First
Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: January 2016

www.samhainpublishing.com