“You make a lot of sense, baby,” he replied, but he did it watching me carefully, and I knew he thought I was making sense just to make him feel better.
So I decided to give him what he needed actually to make him feel better.
“Do I miss the sister I thought I had?” I asked. “Yes, but I’d been missing her a lot longer than this.” I turned in his arms, curled my lips slightly and put my hands on either side of his neck. “I missed her even longer than it’s been since you faked my death.”
At my words, his lips quirked and he took his hands from the railing to wrap his arms around me. Closing in, he pinned me against the deck and held me tight and warm in the cold mountain evening air.
“Have I told you you have a flair for drama, body bags, burning mansions?” I teased in a further effort to lighten the mood.
He bent his head closer to me but said nothing.
“One day,” I murmured, “you’ll have to explain how you pulled that off.”
“Coroner owed me a favor so the ID swung our way. And Baldy has certain access and assured me that particular…specimen would, in the end, do a single good deed in her life, making you safe in yours,” he explained immediately.
My eyes slid away. “Okay. Maybe I didn’t want to know.”
“Though, he was so willing to help, I wasn’t likin’ that much,” Nick stated and my eyes slid back.
“Dr. Baldwin has a soft spot for me.”
He gave me a squeeze. “Yeah, caught that. That’d be the part I wasn’t likin’ that much.”
“I wouldn’t allow a man to fake my death and then get on a plane, leaving everything behind, knowing my shoes and handbags were all going up in smoke, if that man was Dr. Baldwin.” I squeezed him back. “I did it for the man I love. I did it for you.”
Again, Nick said nothing.
Weirdly, he did this for a long time. So long, it concerned me.
“Nick?” I called on another squeeze.
Finally, he spoke.
“The man you love.”
“Yes,” I confirmed rather unnecessarily.
“The man you love,” he repeated.
“Yes,” I repeated as well, getting annoyed because I was getting confused.
He stared at me again.
When I was about to open my mouth, he gave me a shake and declared, “Babe, you’ve never said that to me.”
I stilled.
Hadn’t I?
Months in the mountains with my man and I hadn’t told him I loved him?
“I…well…” I stammered as it hit me.
I actually hadn’t.
How on earth had I not done that?
“Well, I allowed you to fake my death,” I pointed out lamely.
Nick stared at me yet again.
Then he scowled at me.
“That’s it?” he asked.
“Nick, I allowed you to fake my death,” I repeated with emphasis.
In normal people world, that would be a big thing.
In our world, it was lame.
Totally lame.
And he so totally knew it.
“Liv,” he growled.
I shifted my hands from his neck to his stubbled cheeks and rolled up on my toes.
When I got close, I pressed my fingers in and whispered fiercely, “I love you, Nicky. You’ve made me safe. You’ve made me free. You’ve made me happy. But I don’t love you because you did all that. I love you because you’re Nicky.”
I might have said more.
I didn’t get the chance because Nick was kissing me.
He was also done with the cold mountain evening and I knew this because he picked me up and took us inside. Right through the big living room with its stone fireplace, the picture I gave him hanging over the mantel. Right down the narrow hall. Right to our warm bed.
And there I was safe.
There I was free, complete, happy.
Because I was with Nicky.
* * * * *
Nick
Late that night, he held Liv’s naked body close to his under the warm covers in the dark.
She was restful, her weight pressing in to him, and he thought she was asleep.
He would find she wasn’t when she whispered, “Tell me about her.”
Nick felt his body get tight.
She slid a hand up his chest to his neck where she used her thumb to stroke his jaw soothingly. Otherwise, she didn’t move.
“You’ve let her go,” she noted softly. “In that way, you’ve let her go. I know you have with the way you are with me. But now it’s done, sweetheart. It’s time to get her back. She was a part of your life. You’re all of my life. If you want to do it, I want you to know you can give her to me.”
In the drama they’d had, he often forgot how fucking wise she was.
And she was wise because, that day, when he could finally lay Hettie to rest, he needed to give her to somebody. Keep her alive. Even in the dark in the mountains in Tennessee, Nick with the woman he found who was not Hettie, but who was beyond a dream.
He turned into Olivia’s arms.
She tucked herself closer.
Safe in her hold in the dark in their bed, Nick Sebring gave his Livvie the last thing of his he had to give.
He gave her Hettie.
“Her name was Hettie and she couldn’t fry an egg to save her life.”
She relaxed against him and rubbed her nose along his throat.
Nick kept talking.
Liv kept listening.
He ended with, “She’d like you for me.”
Liv emitted a dubious sound before she said, “That’s sweet, honey, but it’s hard to believe.”
“She would.”
“Right.”
She didn’t believe him.