Winning His Heart: The Millionaire's Homecoming / The Maverick Millionaire

They sat there bathed in truth and the special bond of a burden shared. They had shared the burden of loving someone who was grievously flawed and all the choices that entailed.

For Kayla, hopeful and romantic, this had meant moving closer. For David, pragmatic and guarded, moving away.

She had judged David’s choice, and even hated him for it, but now she wondered if it hadn’t been the right one after all. He had saved himself.

And she had lost herself. She had become something she had never been before: cynical and hard and a survivor.

But had she really?

Because sitting here with the warmth of the sun and the warmth of his shoulder being equally comforting, she realized she had never really stopped being that softhearted person who rescued impossible men, and old houses and orphaned dogs.

She had just tried to hide all that was soft about her, because it felt as if it left her open to hurt.

But now she felt soft all over again. She felt soft to her soul and the hard armor around her heart had fallen away, leaving it exposed.

And acknowledging she was those things—someone who believed, still, in the power of love—did not feel like a weakness.

It felt like a homecoming.

Kayla felt as close to David as she had ever felt to another human being. Close and connected.

She tilted her head and looked at him. Really looked. He turned and looked back at her. She saw the most amazing thing in his eyes.

Wonder.

As if he knew he had seen her at her rawest and most real, and still liked what he saw.

In David’s eyes she saw a truth that stole her breath away. If she were standing with her back against the wall, with the enemy coming at her with knives in their teeth, he would stand beside her.

If they were on a ship that was going down in a stormy sea, he would make sure she was safe before he got off.

If the building were burning and filled with smoke, he would be the one finding her hand and leading her out into the cool, clean air.

He was the one who could lead her to life.

Her newly softened heart was so filled with gratitude that she leaned toward him. She did not know how else to express the magnitude of what she was feeling, what she was awakening to, what she knew of herself that she had not known ten minutes ago.

Kayla found the courage to do what she had wanted to do since the moment she had first laid eyes on him again, after the bee had stung her.

If she’d been dying, she wanted to taste him, to feel the soft firmness of his lips tangling with her own.

Why would she not feel the same way about living?

He read her intent. And instead of backing away, he moved his hand to the small of her back and brought her in to himself. He tilted his head down so that it was easy for her to reach his lips.

And then they touched.

She touched the soft openness of her lips to the hard line of his. Only his lips were not hard.

Not at all.

The texture was velvety and plump, like a peach, warmed by the sun and ready to be picked.

At first the kiss was gentle, a welcome. But it quickly deepened to reflect the hunger between them, a long-ago fire that still had embers glowing.

Kayla’s sense of being alive intensified thrillingly. Her blood felt as if it were on fire. It was more than she remembered from that night long ago, because they were both more.

More mature, more aware, more experienced. And it felt as if they both brought everything that they were to that kiss, left nothing behind, gave it all. Heart and soul and blood and bone. Hurts and triumphs and all of life.

Her dog woke in her arms, getting squished between them.

Bastigal growled, and then barked and then snapped at David’s hand, missing by a hair.

They drew apart. Kayla laughed nervously. “I’m sorry. He’s never done that before.”

But did David look faintly relieved as he reeled back from her and ran a hand through his sun-dried dark hair?

He was a man who liked a plan. How would he react to the spontaneous passion that had just erupted between them?

It was an earthquake, and he could feel something shifting between them, or the shift in her heart. He let go of Kayla’s hand and stood up abruptly. “I should go home and change.”

At first she thought he was rejecting her after all. But she couldn’t have been more wrong.

“But then I’ll come back,” he said softly, watching her steadily, letting her know he had seen her and he was not afraid and not scared off by what he had seen, or by what had just leaped up between them, igniting both their worlds.

“You will?”

David nodded. “I need to fix that chair in your kitchen. When I was standing on it, reaching the ceiling, it wobbled pretty badly. I don’t want you to get hurt the next time you stand on it to pour something down HAL’s throat.”

But with her newly opened heart, she saw it wasn’t about the chair, really. Maybe it wasn’t about her or that kiss, as much as she hoped, either. She saw the look he cast toward his own house.

Something in her said to let him go—but it was the old part, that part of her that somehow had stopped believing that good things could happen and that it was okay to be happy.

The newer part felt stronger. Kisses aside, Kayla could see David wanted to have an excuse not to spend time in his mother’s house.

He did not have a home to go to, at least not the one next door. She realized he was looking for reasons not go back to the house he had grown up in, not the way it was now.

And whether he knew it or not, or could acknowledge it or not, something about what had just passed between them had let him know she would stand by him.

That she had his back.

Just as she had become so aware that he would stand by her, no matter what.

Kayla had seen the pain and desperation in him this morning. She had nearly wept when he had spoken about how the way his mother was now was threatening to wipe out everything that had happened before.

And she saw the truth. This morning she had been a different person than the one she was now. When had she become that person? The one who would turn away from someone in need to protect herself?

That was what the hardness inside her had done. That was what the bitterness of her marriage had done. That was what being so unforgiving had done.