home with her parents and she’d go with Tucker, out to the Double T, or wherever. It didn’t matter. Just as long as they went someplace where they wouldn’t be disturbed.
Yes. That would be better than trying to explain everything right now, in the middle of the wedding party, anyway. Much better with just the two of them, truly alone together, somewhere there’d be no possibility of an interruption. That was how it should be, she saw that now: the two of them, alone.
Plus, she couldn’t help thinking, if she waited until the party was over, she’d have another few hours of this magic with him, another few hours until the awful moment of truth…
And okay, she was only proving to herself, once again, that she was a coward in every last, sniveling sense of the word. But what could she do if there was no place for them to talk?
Nothing. Until later.
When she would do it. Absolutely. No backing out.
Just as she was getting used to the idea that she was off the hook for a little bit longer, they reached the ballroom.
And Tucker kept going.
He pulled her along near the back wall as the guests gathered around the stage where a green-skirted table now stood crowned with Lena’s enormous five-tiered, buttercream rose-bedecked cake. Lena and Dirk and Heck were all up there and Heck was shouting about love and forever and what a lucky man Dirk was as the wedding photographer snapped away.
Tucker kept going, toward the double doors on the side wall that led out to the veranda. Which was crazy. They couldn’t go out there. Beyond the windows, lightning flashed and thunder boomed and rolled away in a crashing rumble.
Lori dug in her heels. “Tucker, it’s wild out there.”
He hardly glanced back at her. “It’s under cover. The worst that can happen is the wind will mess up your hair…”
“Oh, Tucker…” Her heart raced and her cheeks burned and she let him continue to pull her along. Excitement and fear and anticipation swirled around inside her, a storm within to match the one outside beyond the veranda.
All at once, everything seemed to have gone crazy and wild—wild as the wind she could hear crying beyond the clubhouse walls. One of the wait staff had gone up on the stage to whisper in her father’s ear. She heard Heck say, “Folks. Folks. I need everyone’s attention. We have a little situa—”
She didn’t hear the rest. Tucker had pushed on the bar that opened the door and they were slipping through it. The door shut itself instantly, almost catching her long skirt, which she managed to tug to safety at the last possible second.
A hard gust of wind blew down the long, deep porch, lifting her skirt and then plastering it hard against her legs. Her formerly sleek hairdo pulled loose of its pins and blew in her eyes and across her mouth.
Out past the porch roof, the rain pounded, huge drops mixed with hail. The sky in the distance lay in heavy layers of gunmetal gray. Lightning slithered down out of the clouds, slicing the grayness with its hot-white gleam. Thunder roared.
Staff members had already been out there to take in the chair and sofa cushions. The bare wicker furniture skittered around in a jerky dance, dragging against the porch boards.
Lori swiped a few strands of hair from her mouth. “Tucker, I don’t know if we—”
“This way.” He led her over, out of sight of the windows, into the corner where the wall of the foyer jutted out toward the wide entrance steps. He pulled her around and backed her up against the wall so she was sheltered from the wind. Then he braced a hand on the wall to either side of her, boxing her in. “Better?”
“I…” Words deserted her. She looked up at him and she knew he was going to kiss her and she also knew that she wasn’t going to stop him. Still, she made a piddling little effort at it. “I think we should—”
“Shh,” he whispered, as beyond the shield of his big, warm body, lightning flared in a chain of bright explosions, followed by bursts of thunder, booming, then rolling away, then booming some more. Hail drummed on the roof over their heads.
Tucker ignored the fury of the storm. He nuzzled her temple, whispered, “Lori. I swear. I was going to go slow, you know? But I don’t want to go slow. I want to kiss you. Please. Say it’s all right.”
All right?
It was more than all right—except for the fact that she should tell him about Brody first, before they did any kissing. She should tell him about Brody, and then, if he still wanted to kiss her, they could take it from there.
But there was a problem.
She was doing that falling thing. She was dropping, drowning, melting into those velvet-brown eyes of his. The wild storm beyond the veranda, the three hundred wedding guests on the other side of the wall…
Everything—all of it—receded. The world went quiet and still. They’d entered the center of their own private storm. There was only Tucker. Tucker, who wanted to kiss her. And Lori, who only longed to kiss him right back.
She lifted her face, anticipation shivering through her like ripples on a glassy pond.
“Say yes,” he whispered. Yes. A truly beautiful word—and, all at once, the only word she knew. “Yes,” he prompted again.
So she said it. “Yes…”
And his lips descended.
Beyond the veranda, the rain came down in punishing sheets, the hail pounded and the lightning flared, answering claps of thunder booming out a moment afterward.
Tucker covered Lori’s sweet mouth with his own—and it happened again. The driving beat of the rain, the bright bursts of lightning, the crash and roll of the thunder—all that, everything that made up the real world—faded away.
It was that night again. Eleven years ago. It was that night…
And this woman.
Amazing. Incredible. The warm, thrilling fit of her mouth under his…the very taste and scent of her: the same. Exactly the same. He thought, Lori. It was Lori, that night…
He thought it, and then he let it go.
It didn’t matter, what crazy tricks his mind and his senses insisted on playing on him. This was what mattered.
This woman. This moment.
This perfect kiss…
He deepened the kiss, pressing himself against her, clasping her arms to pull her away from the wall enough that he could slip his hands around her and gather her close.
She shuddered and sighed and raised her slim arms to clasp his neck. He went on kissing her, tucking her into him, feeling the singing, smooth length of her all along his body, breathing her scent, hearing the rustle of that pink silk dress like a whispered promise of pleasure to come as she kissed him more deeply and pressed ever closer.
This… yes! This was all he wanted. This woman, this moment, with his arms around her…
