Present Day

 

For the first time in five years, Jay Brady was looking at the love of his life. Her hair was black as ink down her back. Her equally black dress was simple, unadorned, slightly boyish. He’d almost forgotten how little she was, barely over five feet. God, he wanted to eat her alive.

She was so gorgeous that something deep in his gut cried out to her, ached.

He knew he was going to have to move in a second. He was frozen solid on a balcony in the middle of a Maryland winter.

His hands gripped the railing behind him as his eyes lasered in through the glass doors separating him from the swanky party in full swing.

All Jay had to do was move. Step forward, call out to her, and for the first time in five years, he’d hear her voice. Maybe even taste her lips. But he had to give his heart a second to restart.

He’d been sure he’d never see her again. She’d vanished from his life like smoke, like a ghost. She’d become nothing more than a memory that he couldn’t stop dreaming about. He swore that if he ever saw her again, he’d never let her go. He wouldn’t give up the miracle twice in his life.

It was with that word in his heart that he took the first step toward her across the balcony.

Miracle.

She was standing, bored, on the edge of the party. He couldn’t get over seeing her in a dress. He’d only ever seen her in a bathing suit. A tank top. His brain could hardly reconcile what he was seeing. His woman, the love of his life, the person by which he’d judged all other people for five years, was just standing in a room, at a party, with a bunch of other people.

He took two more steps toward her. He was just going to open that glass door, say her name and she was gonna see him. She’d come out here. And then whatever was going to happen would happen.

A foghorn sounded on the ocean behind him and Jay froze in place, she looked up again, out toward the water, a look of sadness and regret on her face.

He knew that the sound of a foghorn would make her think of him. Just like it made him think of her. It made him think of her flavor, her breath, the tight clasp of her strong arms around him.

Her eyes swept across the balcony and out to the thin black stretch of ocean behind him. And then they swept back to him. She stared at him.

Even from fifteen feet away, he drowned in the startling green of her eyes. So light they were almost yellow. They glowed against her golden skin. The way they always had.

Jay. He saw her lips say his name as she blinked and blinked at him, as if she were willing herself to see clearly. As if she couldn’t believe what she was seeing.

And that was about all he could take. Seeing her name on his lips snapped something inside of him. Something he hadn’t known was in danger of breaking. He strode forward, three quick steps, and flung open the glass door to the balcony.

And then his arms were completely full of her.

Mari flung herself at Jay, her arms around his neck and her face buried in his shoulder. She’d hit him with so much force that he stumbled backward onto the balcony.

His arms banded around her midsection and he knew he was holding her too tight. There was nothing he could do. He’d lost her once because he hadn’t held on tight enough. She was gonna have to get used to being held like this.

“Mari,” he croaked her name into her ear and her body trembled against his, shook with one, pained sob.

Her fingers gripping his hair painfully, Mari slid down his body and landed her feet on the ground. She was a foot shorter than he was. And their height difference suddenly created a whole lot of space between them that neither of them wanted.

Her fingers, still tearing the hell out of his blonde hair, ripped his head down toward her.

“Jay,” she breathed his name against his lips before she smashed their mouths together.

He felt her legs buckle and she tugged both of them to their knees. Jay’s hand fisted in the material of her dress, his other hand tangled in her hair.

She was here. In his arms. He could taste her tears on her lips as she savagely kissed him. It wasn’t a kiss of sensual passion. It was a kiss that said everything inside her was exploding with relief and joy and all the pain the last five years had caused both of them.

“Miracle,” he said again against her lips.

Neither of them were aware that two other people had stepped out onto the balcony. Jay’s best friends, Marcus and Eli. Best friends since birth, and neither of them had ever seen Jay act this way. Usually, he was calm, collected, controlled. But here he was, tears streaming down his face and practically rolling around with a woman in public. A very attractive woman, sure. But still. They exchanged startled glances.

Jay smashed her body to his as another sob wracked through her. He lowered them down even more so now she sat in his lap, her small body fitting perfectly against his.

“Miracle,” he said again, knowing there was a good chance his grip was bruising her. He tried to loosen his fingers.

“You’re alive,” Mari sobbed against his lips. “You’re alive.”

Jay pulled back in shock. In all the five years he’d pined for her, it had never occurred to him that she’d think he was dead.

“I hoped,” she said as she managed to pull her lips an inch off of his. “But I was never sure. I looked and looked for you. But so many people had died. They could barely keep track of them all. And you were in such bad shape. Oh, god. Jay. You’re alive.”

Her flavor exploded into him as his tongue swept into her mouth. There was passion there, five years worth. But this kiss was about proof. It was about life. It was about holding one another after they thought they never would again.

His tongue pressed against hers and proved just how alive he was. And hers pressed right back, tangling just the way he remembered. It amazed Jay how well he’d remembered her. Every second, every scent, every breath, every texture was exactly the way it was in his memories.

She tore her mouth from his and began kissing every inch of his face. The corner of his mouth, his ears, his brow. And especially his nose.

“Your dumb, big nose,” Mari half laughed, half cried. “I never thought I’d see this dumb, big nose again.”

Jay laughed too, and forced his eyes to open. He couldn’t miss a second of this. And the second his eyes hit hers, she pulled back just a little.

“Your Sinatra blues,” she whispered. It was what she’d called his eyes.

“Paul Newman face with Frank Sinatra’s eyes,” he echoed her old words back to her.

She rolled her eyes at him. “I can’t be held accountable for what I said under such dire circumstances.”

He gripped her even tighter, an emotional grin spreading across his face. There she was. His Mari. His delightful, dry-humored, realistic, tough little woman. His woman who somehow felt so much but still didn’t see the world through rose-colored glasses.

“You look just the same,” Jay said, brushing away tears on her cheeks with the back of his hand.

“Hopefully less sweaty, thirsty, and panicked than I did then,” she replied dryly. She brushed his tears away the same way he had for her. Her hands fell to his shoulders, tightened reflexively. And then she looked down at the way they were sitting. Her nestled into his lap, intimate, lover-like. Something tightened across her expression and Jay felt a corresponding dip in his stomach.

“Mari?” a man’s voice said from behind her.

Jay’s eyes tore from Mari’s face and blearily focused on the three other people on the balcony. Marcus and Eli stood there, looks of stunned amazement on their faces. There was a third man, stepping through the balcony doors and closing it behind him, as if he wanted to keep all the partygoers away from the scene in front of him.

To Jay’s extreme dismay, Mari untangled herself from him, rising back up and straightening her dress out. She held her hand out and hauled Jay up to standing as she wiped the rest of her tears from her eyes.

“What’s going on?” the man asked, his brow furrowed. He wore an expensive suit and his brown hair was carefully styled to look artfully messy.

“A reunion,” Mari answered, her voice still rough with emotion. She reached out and squeezed Jay’s hand. “I haven’t seen Jay in years. I thought I might never see him again.”

Jay looked back and forth between Mari and this douche in a suit. Marcus and Eli wordlessly stepped around to Jay’s sides, perhaps they knew what was coming before Jay even did.

“Linc Cavanaugh,” the man in the sharp suit said, reaching over to shake Jay’s hand. Jay had to drop Mari’s hand to do it, but the second the shake was over, he brought his hand back to Mari’s elbow, wanting, needing at least one point of contact with her.

That contact was ripped away from him when Mari moved away from Jay and to the side of the douche in the suit.

“I’m Mari’s fiancé,” the man said.