She looked pale, like she hadn’t slept well in a while. That could’ve been caused by the contraption wrapped around her leg, or by the fact that she’d clearly had a miserable time the last few days.

I rounded the Jeep before she could climb out and, from a gesture that was pure instinct, I put my hands on her waist and pulled her down.

She was so small in my hold. That bird again. And in my clumsy hands, I felt like it’d be too easy to break her. Once I had her on solid ground, I stepped back. “Ready for some waffles?”

She brushed down the front of her white summer dress as she followed me into the building. She was quiet, all the way through the doors and to our table.

It was odd, being in a whole different country with her. Without anyone watching us. No one knew who we were, and that was such a foreign feeling to me, to be with her without anyone we knew as an audience.

Once she slid into the booth, I patted on my seat across from her. “Want to prop your foot up here?”

She angled back, but her boot under the table didn’t come close to making it on the seat. With a laugh, she sat up straighter. “I’m not tall enough.”

“I know. You’re like a bird,” I said, not meaning to.

She blinked, those damn Botticelli eyes all doe-like; soft and inquisitive.

God, I’d missed her. It struck me then, in this dark little corner of the restaurant, just how much. She laid her hands on the table in front of us, palms up as she worried with her thumbs. Like the night in her bedroom, I found myself distracted by them and wanted to reach over, run my fingertips through the creases in her palms.

Instead, I clutched my hands tight together, eyes searching over her. “You look good, Lotte,” I told her, not because I thought she needed to hear it but because I needed to say it.

She rolled her wrists over, hands flat on the table, and gave me a shy smile. The tension I’d felt from her in the car seemed to dissipate. “Thanks,” she said, and her eyes met mine. “You do too.”

I wanted to ask her how she was, how she really was. So many things I wanted to say, to apologize for. Just being in her presence was like being sated. And after weeks of frustration, I felt the most profound pleasure just looking at her.

“What can I get you?” the waitress interrupted, standing at attention with her pad of paper in hand.

“Water,” Lotte said.

“Coffee, please.” It’d been a long eleven hours to get here, and I knew I needed caffeine before I fell asleep at the table.

The waitress disappeared, leaving us alone.

And I couldn’t wait anymore. I reached my hands across the table and wrapped them around her narrow wrists. To soften my hold, I rubbed a finger across her soft, milk-white skin. “Lotte,” I said. “I’m sorry. For what I said before you left.”

I felt her flinch and knew she wanted to pull away. I slightly tightened my hold, making it impossible for her to escape my grasp.

“I shouldn’t have said that. Shouldn’t have made you feel like that.”

“Sam,” she said quietly. “I’m just glad you’re here. That’s it. Let’s not talk about it.”

Pink stained her cheeks, and for that reason I obliged her. But it wasn’t a conversation I was finished having, not yet. “All right.”

“Why’d you come here?”

She’d effectively steered the topic to the one thing I wasn’t comfortable talking about. So, I deflected her by giving an answer that wasn’t entirely untrue. “I needed to get out of London for a bit.”

She pursed her lips. “Is it because of Della?”

She tried, I’d give her credit, but I saw the way her eyes darkened just mentioning Della’s name, like a mental slap, and my mind went to the first time I’d kissed Lotte—the night her sister had died—and how I’d lied about remembering it.

But now didn’t feel like a good time to bring that up. “Partly. She’s poison for me, so being away from her is … ideal.”

The waitress returned and set our drinks on the table. “Ready to order?”

Lotte laughed softly and tugged out of my hold. “We haven’t even looked at the menu,” she confessed, grabbing the giant laminated menu beside her. She looked at me when I didn’t make a move to get my own menu.

“Order for me,” I asked her. It wasn’t a test, but if it had been, she’d have passed.

“Cheeseburger, medium, with tomatoes but no onions, and chips.”

“Fries,” I gently corrected her, realizing that chips in America weren’t chips in the UK.

She blushed. “Fries.” She handed the menu to the waitress. “I’ll have the same. But…” She chewed on her lip for a moment, contemplating, “This might sound unusual, but could I also have one waffle? On the side.”

The waitress didn’t appear to find it unusual at all, took our menus, and left.

“Just one waffle?” I teased her.

“Well, I did order a burger too. I hardly need a waffle as well.”

“You’re on holiday. You can have whatever you want.”

That brought pause to both of us, with her looking at me before her eyes darted away. I wanted to touch her again, to see if she could feel the fire she was stoking within me. It was such an immediate reaction that I curled my fingers into fists to keep from doing just that.

“So, how far is this Arches place we’re heading to tomorrow?”

She blew out a breath. “I think about four hours south of here. Near the Colorado border. Why do you want to go anyway?”

“Because it was part of the plan. Because what else are we going to do?”

She began worrying her thumbs again, running her nails over themselves. “Okay. Just a day trip?”

“Why? Did you have other plans in mind?”

Her hand moved to just behind her ear and she played with a strand over and over. Twisting one way and then the other. “I haven’t done the hot air balloon ride yet.”

My stomach pitched. The flight over had been one thing, but the idea of being that high in the air, in a basket for Christ’s sakes, made me feel like I’d just done a belly flop. “Ah, well, I guess we’ll have to see you off to do that.”

“See me off? I don’t think so. You’re going to join me.”

I shook my head. “I’m not made for being that high, Lots. I’ll upswallow the whole time.” I patted my stomach to illustrate.

“If you’re going to make me do it, I’m going to make you join me.” She raised her eyebrow in challenge, daring me to tell her no.

“Fine.” The happiness that lit up her face at that made me feel like an arsehole. She was so good, so pure. I couldn’t stay away from her, and the harder I tried to be casual about this, the more I wanted to not be casual. The more I wanted, the more I realized I didn’t deserve.

A sleepy song played on the speakers above us and it reminded me of the song she and I had danced to in London. I wanted to see her dance again, see the way her entire body changed from someone who was demure in appearance but wild at heart. Music was more than just dance for her, it was religion.

“You remembered how I liked my burgers,” I said. The abrupt change in subject threw us both off, but she looked at me like I was daft.

“I’ve prepared enough of them for you, I ought to know how you like them.”

I wondered if I’d ever looked at Della, or any of the other girls I’d been with, the way I was looking at Lotte. Was it because our relationship was founded with Ames, or was it her?

She was soft, but stubborn. Graceful and inquisitive and gentle. When I looked at her, I thought of ocean blue and peaches and secrets and mistakes I’d made and because I couldn’t resist, I pulled the small notebook I kept in my jacket pocket and dropped it on the table.

“Can you open your hand for me?” I asked.

She chewed on her lip but lifted a tentative hand to the table, laying it so her palm was up again.

I pressed the pads of my fingertips just so into her palm, opening her up a little bit more for me. “Like that,” I said with praise on my breath. I had only pencil on me, no colors, but I could at least get it out of my head and onto paper.

The way my pencil glided across the paper gave me a certain kind of calm. Like laying in a bed after a long day. It was rhythmic but not monotonous; there was a music in the sounds my pencil made.

It didn’t take long to get the immediate sketch down, and only required a few glances at her hand to get the lines right, but before our food arrived at the table, I had Lotte’s hand on my paper.

“Oh, wow,” she said, sounding a little breathless. Her fingers came into view, pulling my notepad toward her as she leaned over the table. Several loose tendrils escaped from her braids, covering her eyes, and I watched her take in the drawing as I felt another fit of inspiration. The line of her cheekbone, where her jaw narrowed to a dainty point, made me want to keep drawing.

I nearly laughed. It’d been so long since I’d had even the smallest bit of desire to do this, to observe and memorize the way the shadows played on someone else’s skin.

Elation was the one word that came to mind. It was back, that desire to create. I’d thought I’d lost it, but it’d been here, in the lines of the woman I shouldn’t want, the woman I didn’t deserve to want.

I didn’t know I’d been so starved for oxygen until I could finally breathe again, because of her.