Page 95 of Ghost of a Chance
“I wasn’t in the mood to.I needed time.”
“Yeah, you like to think and analyze shit and then you have a plan,” he said.“Is this your plan?”
She grimaced, shaking her head before she took a step closer to him.“Not exactly.This is me improvising and being impulsive.”
“Ah…so you have no idea how this will go.”He pulled her into his arms, hugging her tightly to him.“I’m an expert in dealing with impulses.”
“Are you?”she asked, hugging him back and looking up at him.They were so close he could see those thick lashes framing her brown eyes and the faint dark circles underneath that betrayed her sleepless night.
“A true pro.So now you just have to keep rolling with whatever happens next.Hold on until you can get your feet back under you.”
“Aren’t they?”
“Not yet,” he said, lifting her off her feet, spinning until he leaned against the counter again and her body rested on his.He brought his mouth down on hers and kissed her with all of the passion and love that had been bottled inside of him for too long.
She kissed him back, her hand on the back of his neck, holding him to her.
“I love you, Kirsty.”
“You do?”she asked.
“Yeah.I do,” he said.Those weren’t words he uttered often or easily.There weren’t many people he truly loved.
“Wow.I wasn’t…that is… I don’t know…”
He had thrown her off balance again, never seen her so flustered.He set her on her feet as she tried to process what he said and maybe what she felt for him.He wanted her to love him back, but he knew that life didn’t always work out that way.She might care for him but love was different to everyone.
“It’s okay.I’m not expecting you to say it back.”
She worried her lower lip, eyebrows knit together.“Why is that okay?”
“I didn’t say it so you’d say it back.When you feel it, it’ll just feel natural to say it back.”
Gia walked in.“Sorry.Didn’t realize you two were…talking?”
“Yeah.What’s up?”he asked her.Later he would deal with the hurt that she hadn’t fallen in love with him the same way he had for her.But right now he was rolling with it.Impulsively telling a woman that he’d had a huge fight with the night before that he actually couldn’t live without her might not have been his best idea.
But honestly?He couldn’t have kept his feelings unsaid for another minute.
“Pete can’t meet us later at the used bookstore and is coming here instead.Who has the book?”
“I left it in the living room, isn’t it there?”Jasper asked her.Glad for the distraction.“I’ll go look for it.”
He was halfway across the kitchen before Kirsty called out to him.
Glancing over his shoulder, he immediately saw the fear in her eyes along with something he’d only caught in her expression once before.When he’d sat next to her on the floor of her room, while she tried to commune with the ghost.
“Yes?”
“I do too,” she said.“I definitely do too.”
He smiled at her, nodding.“We can chat more later.”
“Count on it,” she said.
Suddenly all that rudderless drifting that he’d done since Paul’s death took a deeper meaning.What if he’d been drifting until he met her?What if it was fate, or magical coincidence, that allowed him to find what he’d been looking for all along?
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