move enthusiastically, a woman with a mission. You can’t wait. You can’t wait to get out of the gift shop. You can’t wait to get across the lobby. You can’t wait to—”
“Oh, I can wait, all right. I can wait until hell freezes over.”
“And you grab a set of room keys and you tell me we’re headed to paradise and you mean…What?” He looked at her, his expression hovering halfway between I dare you to try and talk your way out of this one and Go ahead, make my day.
“What I mean…” Laurel moved back one step. Two steps. It was well past time to put some distance between herself and Noah. Some distance between herself and the memories he had a way of evoking, like a magician conjuring something beautiful and tempting where only moments before there had been nothing but thin air. “I mean it’s time for you to go to your room and stay there.”
“You mean…” Noah gave her the sort of wide-eyed, dramatic, smart-aleck look that told her he was going to milk her discomfort for all it was worth. “You mean…good night?”
“I mean good night. What else would I mean? How could any woman in her right mind mean anything else? I mean good night. I mean goodbye. Because I won’t be here in the morning, and that’s when you’ll be leaving.” She hurried to the other side of the front desk. At least with a few hundred pounds of solid mahogany between herself and Noah, she felt as if she stood a fighting chance. “You’ll find everything you need in your room,” she told him, using the kind of honeyed tones that seemed to suit an innkeeper. “Towels. Soap. Shampoo.” She glanced at the little pink shopping bag he’d managed to bring along with him from the Love Shack. “I see you’ve got everything else covered.”
“I do.” Noah moved toward the desk, and Laurel found herself automatically moving back. Even then, he managed to reach across the sign-in book and the room keys and the pile of mail she hadn’t finished sorting. Gently, he touched her arm. His cocky grin softened and so did his voice. “Take it easy, Laurel,” he said. “It was only a kiss.”
Only a kiss?
Laurel could hardly believe her ears. Only a kiss? That? What happened between them in the Love Shack was only a kiss like Pavarotti was only some Italian guy who liked to sing in the shower.
She shook off the thought. And the memories. And Noah’s hand. She supposed she should be grateful that he’d laid it on the line. It was only a kiss. At least to him. At least she knew where he stood. At least she knew where she stood, and where she stood was on the edge of an abyss. She could take a step forward and free-fall headlong into the void. She knew what waited for her there. For a while she’d feel as if she was floating, as if she was flying, and while it lasted, it would be awesome. Like the feeling she had the first time someone called her doctor and the buzz of Fourth of July fireworks and Christmas morning all rolled into one.
But sooner or later she’d land, and when she did, she knew she’d land hard. There was nothing waiting for her but a rocky pit and nothing as sure to make her forget the good times as the bad times.
She had to choose and she had to do it right here and now. She could take the step and start on a dizzying trip that was sure to end with nothing but heartbreak. Or she could convince herself that Noah was right. It was only a kiss.
“Only a kiss, huh?” Laurel congratulated herself—she sounded nearly as nonchalant about the whole thing as he did. “That wasn’t only a kiss, Noah. That was an aberration. A deviation. An anomaly. A freak of nature, like two-headed snakes and those fish that live deep in the ocean where there’s no light so they have these antenna things…” She wiggled her fingers over her head. “And these sort of little lightbulb thingies that flash so they can see where they’re going and—”
“I get the message!” Noah laughed and held up one hand in surrender. “I’m sorry. Honest. I wouldn’t have kissed you if I knew it was going to make you so nervous.”
“I am not nervous.” Laurel tucked her hands behind her back before he could see that they were shaking. She forced herself to look Noah in the eye. “I don’t get nervous,” she told him. “Not about things as inconsequential as that.”
“Of course not,” he agreed. Looking at her looking at him, the smile faded from his face, and he glanced away.
That was a first. Laurel made a mental note. Noah was never the first to back down from anything. Interested, she tipped her head and watched him shift the shopping bag from one hand to the other. Was it her imagination, or had a little of the swagger gone out of Noah? It must have been a trick of the soft pink lighting. She could have sworn he looked as disconcerted by what had happened in the Love Shack as she was feeling.
“I don’t want you to get the wrong impression,” he said. “I don’t want you to think that I was expecting that you—”
“No!” Laurel jumped in to interrupt as quickly as she could. She didn’t need Noah to spell it out for her. She didn’t need him to detail exactly what he’d been expecting. She didn’t want to think about what he’d been expecting. Or what she’d been expecting in return. Or what she’d been expecting him to expect.
“I mean, I don’t want you to think that I thought I could just waltz in here after four years and—”
“Of course not.” Laurel decided it was better to agree with him than it was to risk further discussion. Kissing her former fiancé within minutes of running into him after a long separation and a nasty breakup was not the kind of thing a woman wanted to discuss in detail. At least, not with her former fiancé.
Laurel wasn’t prepared for the stab of regret that followed fast on the thought. She could take the surprise and the anger that was part of the package of seeing Noah again. She could deal with the embarrassment she felt at losing her head and giving in to the potent pleasures of his kiss. But regret…
She pulled in a slow breath and let it out.
Regret used to be her best friend. It was one friend she didn’t want to get chummy with again.
Holding fast to the thought, she raised her chin. “Good night, Dr. Cunningham,” she said.
For a second, it looked like Noah wanted to say something. She watched his lips part and his eyes spark, the way they always did when he was headed into some particularly interesting discussion. He apparently changed his mind. Hanging on to the shopping bag, he headed to the stairs. “Good night, Dr. Burton.”
Laurel didn’t watch him go upstairs. There was something just a little too twisted about enjoying the sight of that nice, tight rear of his.
“Don’t need it. Don’t want it,” Laurel mumbled to herself. Maybe if she said it often enough, one of these days she’d finally convince herself it was true. Before she could forget it, she moved to the front of the desk and hurried through the routine Maisie had taught her to follow each night—check to make sure the fire was out, check to make sure nothing was cooking in the kitchen, check to make sure the doors were locked. When it was all taken care of, Laurel grabbed her car keys off the counter in the kitchen and her jacket from where she’d tossed it over one of the kitchen chairs. She thought about stopping to say good-night to Maisie and Doc Ross and decided against it. Something told her they had other things on their minds.
Things she refused to have on her mind.
Laurel headed out of the kitchen and across the lobby. She’d left her car parked in front
