Grace’s eyes burned. ‘Oh, Jamie, I’m so sorry.’
He shrugged, but that didn’t fool her for a moment. The events of fifteen years ago had hurt him as much as they had her. ‘I should’ve kept texting and ringing until you did listen. I should’ve sent you long emails explaining everything.’
Except his parents had made him feel unwanted and completely dispensable. In her panic, so had she.
Giving into instinct, she rose and planted herself in his lap and hugged him for all she was worth.
***
The warm weight of Grace in his arms made Jamie come alive in ways he’d forgotten. Pulling her against him, he relished her scent, her curves, and the soft hair that tickled his nose.
This. This is what he’d been missing for the last fifteen years.
She eased away and he thumbed a tear from her cheek. ‘You crying for me, Gracie?’
The breath she dragged in made her entire frame shudder. ‘What they did to you was appalling. And I’m sorry I was such a drama queen, that I made things even more difficult for you.’
He tried to temper the leap of his pulse. Was she finally ready to talk about it? ‘The timing couldn’t have been worse.’
The previous day they’d made love for the first time. They’d both been virgins, and for two weeks—since clapping eyes on each other—their hormones had been raging. It hadn’t been planned, there’d been no forethought. They’d lost their heads and had followed the dictates of their bodies—blindly, greedily, and drunk on the adventure of it. He’d never felt more euphoric than when Grace had climaxed, and then he too had been flung into a vortex of pleasure.
They’d held each other afterwards as they’d drifted back down to earth. Until the moment Grace had sat bolt upright, her eyes wide with panic. ‘We didn’t use protection!’
Even now the memory had his gut churning. He should’ve looked after her. He should’ve been prepared. He should’ve protected her! In that moment he’d hated himself.
‘There was nothing unnecessarily dramatic in your reaction. For God’s sake, I should’ve known better. I shouldn’t have risked you getting pregnant.’
‘We should’ve known better,’ she corrected. ‘I blamed myself just as much. I couldn’t believe I’d risked so much. I couldn’t believe I could lose control so completely.’ Shadows darkened her eyes. ‘It terrified me. I’d considered myself capable, level-headed, sensible, but I’d been none of those things.’
He wanted to rid her eyes of those shadows. He gave a slow shrug. ‘I don’t know. You were pretty darn capable in the hayshed that day.’
She stared and then clapped a hand over her mouth to smother a gurgle of laughter.
The memory of their long-ago encounter rose up all around them. Things inside him tensed and clenched.
She pulled her hand from her mouth to rest it against his chest, her gaze lowering to his mouth. She moistened her lips and he could’ve groaned. Hunger she didn’t try to hide stretched through her eyes, and he knew he was lost.
Log in or create an account to read the next chapter of "Second Chance in the Outback"
Every month we select a new title from one of our authors so that you can discover new stories, locations and genres for free.