Page 53 of Taken With You
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Amanda had worn low heels, knowing she’d be on her feet for most of the night, but as Garrick neared, she teetered like she was wearing stilettos. If it weren’t for him sliding his hands to cup her cheeks, she would have crumpled to the concrete floor.
She whispered, “Say that again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“I love you, Amanda.”
Rippling shocks shot through her. Her heart struggled to absorb the words.
“I think I fell in love with you,” he said, leaning close enough that she could smell the port on his lips, “the first day I saw you standing in the backyard, waiting for me.”
She remembered the hot sun on her shoulders. The smell of eucalyptus in the air. The silhouette of Garrick approaching across the field, her heart leaping in her chest.
“I didn’t recognize it at the time,” he said. “But I knew you were someone extraordinary. Someone who was going to become very special to me.”
A tremor slid under her skin. She’d felt this same tremor the day she’d met him, but she’d attributed it to a physical attraction, nothing more. Now she knew that a far wiser part of herself had recognized the man she was meant for.
“This is how big a fool I am.” He breathed a laugh. “I figured that kick I felt when I first met you was a business instinct. I’m rarely wrong about a new hire, a new investment, a new strategy. Within ten minutes of talking, I knew I needed to have you as my partner.”
She gripped his wrists, her throat narrowing. She had so many words but couldn’t push them through.
“But I didn’t know exactly how much I needed you, or in what way,” he said, lowering his voice, “until I worked beside you at the crush.”
She remembered that day, too, Garrick wielding a shovel, tossing bright smiles at her from across the sorting table. She opened her mouth to confess but he ran a thumb across her lips.
“I have so much to say, Amanda, but if you talk now, I’ll forget everything.”
She swallowed deep and felt the race of his pulse in his wrist.
“My friends,” he said, “Dylan and Logan—you met them tonight.”
She nodded. She remembered them, a giant of a Viking and his date and a doctor whose botanist girlfriend had pulled her aside to asked permission to scour the hill behind the cabin for a plant with an unpronounceable name.
“My friends have been harassing me, especially since my brother’s death, to slow down, to delegate work, to take my brother’s untimely death as a lesson to myself. I promised I would…but I never did.” A muscle flexed in his cheek. His brows drew together as if he were contemplating the big questions of the universe. “I told myself that I couldn’t slow down without destroying everything Dominic and I built. But that was a lie. The truth is I didn’twantto change my life. Not until I met you.”
She blinked as tears blurred her vision. She remembered Garrick’s frustration when he saw how hard she’d been working during the crush, how little sleep she’d been getting. A pang of guilt shot through her but then faded away. Her behavior had been a mirror held up to him. She was humbled to think it had affected him in so deep a way that he would find it in himself to change.
“I should warn you,” he added, pressing his forehead against hers, “that as much as I want to spend every waking moment by your side, I’ll have to fly back and forth to New York for a while.”
“Of course you will.”
“I’m setting up a new management structure. Spreading the workload between me, my brother Luke, and my sister Theresa. It’ll take a few months to sort things through—”
“Take as long as you like, Garrick. Just come back to me.”
She wrapped her arms around him. His shoulders settled as if a great weight had rolled off them.
“Be my true partner, Amanda.” He dug his fingertips deeper into her hair. “In more than a winery, and more than the future west coast office of Kane Enterprises. Stay with me here, in this cabin. Keep my feet on the ground. Share my bed. And my heart.”
A slow tear trailed down her cheek. She strained up on her toes to get closer to him. She couldn’t stop gazing at his beautiful features, the dark hair she couldn’t wait to run her fingers through. In her chest, hiccups threatened. She struggled with the urge to laugh and cry all at the same time. Joy stretched inside her, expanding her ribs, pushing up against her throat.
He pulled away a fraction, waiting for something, his throat flexing in a swallow as the moments ticked by.
Of course.
