After Midnight (19 page)

He knew it. At the same time that knowledge paralyzed him. Made him unsure of what to do next.

But telling her was still a difficult thing. The words were hard, and he was so used to acting as though nothing mattered that now that something did he wasn’t sure how to proceed. He had a plan, however, even though he had no idea if it would work.

He’d called his dad to ask for advice, but the old man had told him that if he’d had the answer to what women wanted he wouldn’t have been married and divorced five times. But there had been no bitterness in his father’s voice. And Carter had realized that every man had to find the path that worked for him. For Carter he couldn’t see a path without Lindsey in it, which was why he was waiting for the right moment to show her what she meant to him instead of just finding out what he meant to her.

He had figured that out at three in the morning. Why was it that all the answers to his craziest ideas came to him then? He knew that tricking her into falling for him wasn’t the answer, but it might be the vehicle to the answer.

Like the blindfold he’d used when they’d gone to the crater. It had turned out to be a sort of magic elixir to getting her to talk about all the things she usually kept locked away.

“You keep watching the door like you can make her appear,” Will said, dragging him out of his thoughts.

“If only,” Carter grumbled. “Life would be so much easier if she’d just do what I wanted her to.”

“Really?” Will asked. “I’ve found that I don’t always know what I want when it comes to Penny. She always surprises me, and it’s better than whatever I planned.”

He looked at the other man. There was an element of truth in his words. “I just want her to be here so I can make sure she’s okay.”

That was part of it. And then he was afraid he’d probably embarrass himself by going to her and pulling her into his arms. But that was what he wanted to do. He wanted to admit that he’d had enough of chasing her from a distance. To tell her that nothing was insurmountable when they were together. To say he should never have let anger motivate him into walking away from her.

Because he knew better than to let his temper control his actions. He was all prepared to say that...and more...but then Lindsey walked into the room with her long blond hair braided to one side and hung over her shoulder.

19

“I’
VE
GOT
A
new rule,” Lindsey said as Penny led the way to the small stage that had been set up on the far end of the kickoff breakfast. The room was full, and she saw her teammates as well as the corporate sponsors...and Carter.

He stood by his team’s table talking to Penny’s boyfriend, Will. Penny had been sweet last night when she’d shared stories of how she’d been unsure of Will and how he’d overcome it. Elizabeth had bared her soul, as well. It had been humbling to realize that the other women had been in her shoes. She’d felt so isolated by her doubts.

“What rule?” Penny asked.

“No making important life decisions when I’ve had two glasses of wine,” Lindsey said. Last night when she’d been trying to come up with the right gesture to show Carter how much he meant to her, it had seemed a good idea. But this morning, as she’d had her hair braided to match the Ice Queen image that was often used in the media to go along with articles about her, she’d started to have second thoughts.

“Do you want to spend the rest of your life in agony?” Penny said.

She noticed the pretty event planner wasn’t afraid to go for over-the-top drama at times.

“Or without Carter?” Elizabeth asked, coming up on her other side.

“No, I don’t. But this seemed like it would be a lot of fun last night and this morning... I’m scared.”

Penny threaded her arm through Lindsey’s left one, and Elizabeth did the same on her right. “We’re here with you.”

She smiled. She’d made good friends. It was one thing that she’d gotten from the past year. The time she’d thought was lost because she hadn’t been skiing had turned out to be very valuable.

“Okay, I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” Lindsey said, bracing herself for whatever was about to come next.

“That’s good, because it looks as if Carter has noticed you,” Penny said. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

“What?”

“My mom used to say that every morning when it was time to leave,” Penny said. “I don’t get to quote her often enough.”

Lindsey allowed herself to be distracted for a moment by Penny, but then searched out Carter. She found him, wearing his snowboarding outfit from the winter games last year, standing by his team table. And when their eyes met, she felt the courage that had been lacking in her until this moment.

She realized that once again she was drawing strength from him, and it felt right. He was her strength, and she needed to prove to him that he was more than a distraction. More than she’d labeled him, and that she was willing to take the risk and admit that she’d fallen for him.

Because she had fallen big-time for the bad-boy snowboarder.

And it was time to stop running from that love the way she’d stopped running from her fear of going down the mountain. She followed her friends through the crowded room, pausing to greet her team and tell them that she thought they’d win today.

The closer they got to the stage, the more her nerves almost got the better of her. But she had realized that nothing—not skiing again, not embarrassment—
nothing
scared her more than not telling Carter how she felt.

They got to the stage and Lars smiled at her and gave her the thumbs-up. She’d decided to take the entire big gesture thing and make it pretty gigantic. She glanced around the room and saw that everyone she’d talked to was in place, too. Bradley was standing by the sound system in the back of the room as she climbed up onto the stage dressed in her ski outfit looking like the ice queen as she took off her coat.

Penny and Elizabeth climbed the stage, too, and stood behind her. She cleared her throat as one of the techs handed her a microphone.

“Good morning, everyone,” she said. The talking slowly died down and everyone turned toward where she stood at the front of the ballroom.

“First of all, thank you for participating in today’s event and for volunteering your time and services for our event this coming November.”

There was a round of applause and Lindsey took a deep breath.

“What many of you might not know is that this event was the brainchild of Carter Shaw.”

She pointed to the corner where Carter stood. “There is probably a lot about Carter that you don’t know, but the most important thing from my point of view is that he’s...um...
not
a distraction to me.”

She signaled to Bradley and heard the single drum beat before Cher started singing “The Shoop Shoop Song” and she lip-synched, “‘Does he love me?’”

With Penny and Elizabeth dancing and shooping behind her, she met Carter’s blue-gray gaze from across the room. Slowly she sang and danced her way over to him, weaving a path through the crowd as everyone clapped and turned to look at him, too.

She was more nervous about what he was going to do once she got to his side, but she felt alive and so in love with him at that moment that it really didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to be able to tell herself that he didn’t know how she felt after this moment.

She stopped in front of Carter as the song ended with “It’s in his kiss.” She stood there for a minute and looked into his eyes.

“I wanna know if you love me so,” she said quietly. She lifted her hands to his face, curving them against his cheeks as she went up on tiptoe and kissed him.

He stood there, his mouth rigid under hers for a moment, and she feared she’d made a huge mistake. But then she felt his arms come around her as he lifted her off her feet and spun her around in his arms.

“I do love you,” he whispered into her neck. “I hope you felt it in my kiss.”

* * *

C
ARTER
FELT
HUMBLED
and happy and so damned glad that Lindsey had more courage than he did when it came to showing how much she loved him. He held her closely to him and never wanted to let go.

“Gorgeous, I loved that,” he said with a big grin. Then he realized that everyone in the room was still staring at them. And if he’d learned anything from their last public discussion, it was that she preferred privacy.

He led her out of the room and down the hall to one of those little conversation nooks. He set her on her feet and gazed into her big brown eyes.

“Did you mean it?” he asked. He’d been alone so long. Felt so unattached to everyone else in the world that it was hard to believe she’d connected to him. That she loved him. Love wasn’t something he’d ever prized until he thought he’d never have hers.

“Yes, I meant it. Would I sing that song and dance around the ballroom if I didn’t?” she asked, still clutching his hand tightly.

She seemed to need his strength now that she’d made her confession, and he was more than happy to give it to her. “You do like the spotlight.”

“Ha. You know I don’t. Listen, I wore this outfit today because last year when I had my crash I felt like I lost everything. That my life was over. I retreated here and recovered physically, but mentally I had no idea how to fix myself.

“And then you showed up, teasing me and flirting and making me think about things that had nothing to do with skiing, but you woke me up. Shook me out of my icy state, and I’m not the Ice Queen anymore. You’ve made it so I can’t be again. I really do love you, Carter.” Tears shimmered in her eyes as she reached up and gently brushed a lock of hair off his forehead.

He brought his mouth down on hers, kissing her with all the emotion that he’d shoved deep down for so long. To hear her say those words and confess to loving him.

“Do you feel it in my kiss?” he murmured as he lifted his head. “I love you, Lindsey. I have never in my life been afraid of anything. I’ve never needed anyone. I’m happy to look for my next big challenge and move on, but the thought of leaving here without you by my side was unbearable.” He cupped her face in his hands, one thumb gently caressing her cheek. “I wanted you to see me and know that last year when I dared and tried to claim a kiss, I was really coming after you.

“I was ready for our lives to stop being about competing on the snow and to make them more intimate. I can’t live without you, gorgeous. I love you.”

She smiled at him. “I was so nervous. But I wanted to prove how much you meant to me. I’m sorry for all the things I said. And how I acted at the ski lesson yesterday.”

He sat on the couch and pulled her onto his lap, cradling her close to him as he stroked his hand down her back. He could hardly believe that she was his. At last, after all these years, he had the one woman he’d always been afraid to admit he wanted.

“I was pushing you, too. I didn’t want to leave myself vulnerable. Admit I loved you before you did,” he said. “Damn, gorgeous, you beat me to it today. I was planning to confess at the end of the events.”

“Once again you are eating my dust,” she said with a huge grin. “I couldn’t wait. Skiing is important, of course, but I needed to know where you fit in my life... Well, that you’d be in my life at the end of the race.”

He looked into those big beautiful brown eyes of hers and felt a sense of rightness settle over him. “You have me.”

“Good. That doesn’t mean I’m still not going to beat you at everything we do.”

“Uh, how do you figure you’ve done that?” he asked drily.

“Um, poker, I won. World records—I’ve got two. Your heart, I won again.”

He’d won, as well...at poker and with her heart.

He cuddled her close and traced the line of her neck down her arm and lifted her hand to his mouth to kiss her palm before placing it over his heart. “You have my heart, that is true. I have a world record, and I only compete in one event so that pretty much makes us even. And...poker? I let you win.”

She threw her head back and laughed. The joyous sound echoing through the hall and through his empty soul. “You let me?”

“That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it,” he said.

“If that’s what you want to believe,” she murmured. “I want the man I love to be happy.”

“I am.”

She’d made him the happiest man in the world today. Where he’d had doubt and fear and bottled-up emotion, he now had Lindsey and her love. He knew that the road for them wouldn’t be traditional or smooth—that just wasn’t their way. But having her by his side was all he’d wanted, and he could admit now that he was very happy to have her by his side.

They both went back to their teams and competed in their events. Carter felt a little nervous when Lindsey got ready for her run, but she did it like the pro she was and even beat him down the mountain.

But winning didn’t seem as important now that he’d won her heart and had her by his side for today and the rest of their lives.

* * * * *

Keep reading for an excerpt from SEDUCING THE MARINE by Kate Hoffmann

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