Love Me

All his life, he'd had a role to play. His brother, Travis, had been the dog. The player. So Luke had taken the opposite side. He'd been the good guy. The honest guy. The safe guy.

It wasn't until last night with Janica that he'd stopped being all those things, that he'd let himself explore the man hiding beneath the layers, beneath the driven surgeon who never let anyone down.

Jesus, he was letting Janica down. He knew he was, with the way he kept using her body, with the way he kept pushing and shoving at her, not just physically, but emotionally.

And still, she thought she loved him.

He still didn't see it. Couldn't possibly understand why. How.

Didn't even begin to comprehend why his chest felt so tight every time she was close. Every time he looked at her, or touched her. Every time she said “I love you.”

He and Janica shouldn't fit together like this. She shouldn't feel like the missing piece of him. Not when anyone could see that the two of them were all wrong for each other.

Completely, impossibly wrong.

But it was hard to think clearly about anything with her naked body warm and soft on his.

He loved the way she smelled, loved the way she tasted, loved the way her taut muscles gave way to purely feminine heat when she was coming.

His muscles that had been so taut since the night before in the ER, except for those few hours when he'd fallen asleep holding her, finally settled down, relaxing into her warmth. He let his eyes drift out to the ocean waves out the front window, seeing how blue it was for the very first time. And then he closed his eyes and unconsciously pulled her closer against him as his mind finally stopped racing.

* * *

Janica felt him fall asleep beneath her, just as he had the night before. She knew how hard he drove himself, knew how exhausted he had to be, and was glad that he felt comfortable enough to fall asleep with her not once, but twice, even with the sunlight streaming in.

She, on the other hand, felt much too amped up to sleep. And she knew if she stayed with him like this, there'd be no way to stop herself from waking him up to make love to him again.

It wasn't that she didn't want to have sex with him again. Of course she did. He was the most spectacular lover she'd ever been with. No one else had ever made her body come alive like he did.

But right now, before she took him inside her body again, before she came apart beneath his mouth and hands, before he pressed his mouth to hers and she took her next breath from his lungs, she needed to figure out a way to deal with all the secrets she'd just admitted to him.

It was one thing to tell him she loved him.

It was another entirely to detail it, to lay it out in such painful clarity.

Now, there was no way she could ever back away from it. No way she could try to take it back, or say she'd simply been wrapped up in the great sex.

And from this moment forward, her stark emotional admission would always be between them.

Shifting gently out of his arms, she covered him with a blanket, put her clothes back on, and went outside to get her sketchbook out of the car.

During the hardest times in her life, when she felt twisted up inside, the only chance she had of making it through in one piece was if she was putting her feelings down on paper, one image at a time.

So that's what she'd do now, in this cabin on the ocean in Big Sure, with Luke sleeping on the couch beneath a soft blanket she pulled up over his naked body. Even though she already knew that this time the problem was bigger than her pencil and paper.

Chapter Twelve

Where was she?

Luke kicked off the blanket and sat up, looking for any sign that Janica was still there. But her clothes and her bag were gone.

She was gone.

No!

It was almost impossible to breathe until he walked to the door and saw her sitting on a rock just off the deck, her head bent down over her notepad as she captured the setting sun over the ocean.

My God, she was beautiful. How had he missed seeing her all these years?

Or had he?

His brain spiraled back five years to their meetings about Lily and Travis. Hadn't there been something there? An attraction he hadn't wanted to acknowledge because she was so young, so impetuous, so forward and overtly sexy.

He saw her pencil still on the page, knew she sensed his presence.

Turning her head to look at him, she scanned his naked body with a saucy grin. “It's been a long time since I did a figure model drawing class. You would've caused a riot. For the girls and the boys.”

Looking down at himself, he shook his head. He hadn't even realized he was still naked. All he could think about when he woke up was Janica.

If she had left.

Or if she had made the choice to stay.

Closing her notepad, she stood up and said, “I'm starved. Have you got any food?”

“I don't know.”

He hadn't been thinking about food when he got here. Just getting drunk.

And feeling sorry for himself.

Moving past him, the soft fabric of her shirt brushing lightly against his already half-mast cock, she went to look in the refrigerator. He had his pants on by the time she pulled out some eggs, a block of cheese, and some sausage.

Watching her maneuver around the kitchen gave him another chance to see her in a completely new light. He'd never thought of her as someone who would even know how to boil water, let alone whip up omelets.

Minutes later, she was pushing a plate over to him. Coming to sit beside him at the kitchen island, she smiled and said, “Sex always makes me hungry,” before forking out a bite from the plate.

“This is great.” The best omelet he'd ever had. “Where'd you learn to cook?”

“Thanks,” she said. And then, “Lily taught me when we were kids.” She shrugged. “I guess she figured since we were fending for ourselves she wanted to make sure I never starved if something ever happened to her.”

She'd been so young when her parents had died and the Aunt who had taken in Janica and Lily wasn't exactly the motherly type.

“It must've been hard for you.”

Again, she shrugged. “Lily took really good care of me. Better than most of my friends’ parents.”

He knew what she was doing, trying to act tough, like she hadn't been hurt. Because that was just what he'd always done. What he was still doing.

“Still, there's a difference between a sister and a mother. I'm sorry, Janica.”