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Authors: Kayla Perrin

BOOK: All I Want Is You

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Again with the nervous chortle. “I'm not sleeping with her. W-what are you talking about?”

“Someone once told me that if a man isn't sleeping with you, he's sleeping with someone else.”

Alex narrowed his eyes. “I don'tâ”

“I didn't want to believe it,” Mikki went on. “But it makes sense. Four months ago, when you pretty much stopped sleeping with me, I couldn't understand why. I didn't know what I'd done.”

“Mikki, baby. I don't know what you're talking about. You're the one for me. You and you alone.”

Mikki remembered being in the bar with her friends, devastated over the fact that Alex had broken up with her, that she had expected him to propose over the holidays. Now she couldn't believe just how lucky she was.

Everything had changed. And yet Alex was looking at her as though nothing had changed. As though his smile still had power over her. The power to make her melt. The power to make her his.

“I know you were sleeping with her,” Mikki told him. “I can't believe you thought something like that wouldn't get back to me.”

“All right,” Alex said. “I admit I got involved with someone I shouldn't have. I'm not proud of that. But it was just a brief fling. Something meant to test my love for you,” he added, looking at her earnestly. “And now I know, without any doubt. You're the one for me.”

“But you're not the one for me.” Mikki spoke simply, no emotion. She didn't want him to think that this was about her being angry about his affair, which she hadn't even known about until after the fact. This was about her realizing that she had been spared from making the biggest mistake of her life.

“W-what?” Alex sputtered, his smile promptly dying.

“It's too late,” Mikki said. “For us.”

“Sandra meant nothing to me.”

“But Barry means everything to me.”

Now Alex's eyes narrowed in confusion. “Who's Barry?”

An odd feeling came over Mikki, like tiny prickles of heat bursting on her skin. A slow breath oozed out of her as she realized what she'd said.

“Who's Barry?” Alex repeated, louder this time.

“He's someone I met.”

“Since we broke up?”

“Someone who doesn't think I'm boring in bed.”

“So that's what this is about,” Alex said. “You're angry about that one comment.”

“No,” Mikki said simply. “It's about the fact that I met someone who made me realize I deserve better. Someone with whom things in the bedroom will never be boring. Because we click the way a man and a woman are supposed to click. On every levelâemotional and physical.”

As Mikki said the words, she realized that she was conveying to Alex a sentiment she had not even conveyed to Barry. Instead, yesterday she had basically told Barry that they'd been having fun, nothing more.

She had been scared, terrified of the idea of making another mistake. So fresh off the heels of her breakup with Alex, she hadn't wanted to trust that her heart was leading her in the right direction.

And the other hurdle, one she had considered last night as she'd lain in bed, was that Barry lived in Chicago while she lived in New York.

But suddenly, Mikki realized a glaring truth. Time and distance didn't matter. Not when you were dealing with Mr. Right.

She began to move now, one foot in front of the other fast. She headed to the study door.

“Where are you going?” Alex asked. “We . . . we haven't finished our discussion.”

Mikki opened the door, then turned to face him. “There's nothing to discuss. Nothing you say will make me change my mind. Because I'm in love with someone else.”

And then Mikki hurried into the foyer, slipped into her sandals, and grabbed the keys for the Chevy Malibu that were on the hall table.

She heard Alex saying, “Eight days? How did this happen in eight days?”

Mikki didn't answer. She simply opened the door and ran outside, knowing that Alex was completely baffled as to how any woman could possibly resist him. Especially her.

Thank God Barry's flight was later this afternoon. Because that meant he should still be at the hotel. Mikki had to get to him, tell him that she loved him.

It was amazing how crystal clear that realization suddenly was. Then again, maybe a part of her had always loved him.

Love was the reason they had connected in such an explosive way in the bedroom, because of their mutual bond from the past. A past in which they had forged a solid friendship over two years of high school. Barry had been the one she had turned to then, for laughter and comfort. And yet she'd thought he'd been in love with Tiffany, so she'd never dared to think past the idea of the two of them being friends.

Yes, it was all so clear now.

Mikki had so easily trusted Barry with her body the first night, because she had known that she could trust him with her heart.

As she pulled out of the driveway, she looked in the rearview mirror and saw Alex exiting the house and coming toward the car. Mikki turned right, and then Alex disappeared from her viewâand her lifeâforever.

Chapter 16

Mikki drove all the way to the Marriott hotel with a lead foot and was elated to arrive there having avoided any cops. She parked, hurried into the hotel, then went upstairs to the fourth floor. Reaching Barry's door, she knocked on it.

No one answered.

Barry had to be in the shower. Mikki pounded on the door this time, hoping that he would hear her from within the bathroom.

Again, there was no answer.

She listened for sound inside the room. Hearing none, she frowned. Certainly Barry hadn't left for the airport already.

Mikki went back downstairs, suddenly terrified that she was too late. Stupidly, she'd left her cell phone at home, having simply rushed to her parents' car and started driving.

“Barry,” Mikki said to the woman at the reception desk. “He was staying in room 402, and now he's not there. Has he checked out?”

The woman looked confused. “Barry? Can you give me the guest's last name, please?”

Of course. “Sanders. Barry Sanders.”

The woman typed the information into her computer, and a moment later confirmed, “Yes. Mr. Sanders checked out. Not too long ago, actually. He mentioned something about being able to get an earlier flight.”

Mikki's heart sank. No, she couldn't be too late. Not now that she had figured out exactly who she was meant to be with. She would never have guessed that Barry, her old friend from high school, would end up being the man of her dreams. But there was a certain serendipity to it.

Maybe something would have sparked with them earlier if Mikki hadn't had a knack for picking all the wrong guys to obsess over in high school. Or maybe if Barry hadn't headed off to Chicago for college. In a pre-Facebook era, they'd both lost touch.

Fate.
She heard Isabel's word in her mind, and as Mikki got back into the car, she smiled. Her friend had been right after all.

Mikki started up the car and headed for Miami International Airport, knowing that it didn't matter how long it took to get love right. It only mattered that you did.

Mikki raced to the airport. She didn't know which flight Barry was taking, only that he would be heading back to Chicago. She was grateful that her parents had a pile of change in the car, money that allowed her to park.

Hurrying inside the airport, Mikki checked the boards for flight departure information. She saw that an American Airlines flight was leaving for Chicago in an hour and a half.

Was that Barry's flight? And if it was, how could Mikki get beyond the gate? She didn't have a ticket. She wasn't flying. You couldn't get past security unless you were booked on a flight.

Without her phone, she couldn't call him. How stupid she had been to leave it behind. Her goal then had simply been to get out the door as quickly as possible.

As Mikki pondered her quandary for a moment longer, she decided that she would have to ask security to page Barry. She would come up with an excuse. Something desperate.

Like what? That his mother was sick? No, that wouldn't be good. Then what? What could she say?

Because she had to reach him. She couldn't let him get on a flight to Chicago without letting him know how she felt.

Mikki's stomach tightened as she began to move across the airport floor, trying to figure out what she could possibly say to security in order to get them to page Barry. She scanned the area, looking for an information desk . . . and then her heart slammed hard against her rib cage.

It was Barry. She would recognize those broad shoulders anywhere, that smooth, bald head. He turned, allowing her to see his profile. Relief rushed through her when she got a glimpse of his goatee.

Yes, it was him!

Mikki began to rush through the crowded airport. He was in the security line, heading toward an agent. Barry must've stayed outside to either get a bite to eat or do something else. It was her good fortune that he hadn't yet gone through the security line.

Fate.

She moved her feet quickly, muttering, “Excuse me” several times as she brushed past people. Barry was getting ever closer to the front of the security line. If he got past the agent, it would be too late.

“Excuse me,” she said, and physically bumped a woman out of the way. She didn't mean to, so she said, “I'm sorry.”

And then she was running. She could see from her vantage point that Barry was just about to reach the agent.

“Barry!” she yelled.

Barry was reaching for what she assumed was his identification to pass to the security officer.

“Barry!” she yelled again, louder this time.

He turned. His eyes scanned the area, but he didn't see her.

She kept going, now waving her hands frantically above her head. “Barry, it's me.”

She saw the moment he saw her. His eyes narrowed in question, and his lips parted.

“Barry, please don't leave yet.”

He had already handed his documents to the security agent, but now he took them back and stepped to the side.

Mikki went to the black rope cordoning off the security line, moving to get as close as possible to Barry. He stepped toward her, letting the people behind him pass.

“Mikki, what are you doing here?”

“I . . . I had to see you.”

“But . . . why?”

“I couldn't let you leave.”

“Yesterday you saidâ”

“I know what I said. And I . . . I was lying.”

Barry's eyebrows shot up.

“Not really lying to you, but lying to myself,” she clarified. “I found something with you that is real. Eight days ago, I was involved with someone else. Someone I thought I would be with for the rest of my life. I couldn't accept that I could so easily fall for you. You were supposed to be a fling to get over Alex.”

Mikki was aware that people were gazing at her and Barry, watching their interaction with interest. But she didn't care.

“You told me we were only having fun,” Barry said.

“I know. That's what I was lying about. Because it wasn't just fun, Barry. It was more.”

Barry said nothing, just stared at her, and Mikki began to worry that he would respond to her the way she had only an hour ago responded to Alex. That he would tell her it was too late. Maybe her rejection of him had already caused him to decide that he was better off moving on without her.

She reached for him, taking fistfuls of his shirt into her hands. She couldn't let him walk out of her life the way she had just walked out of Alex's. Because what she had found with Barry was more than she had ever had with Alex. She was 100 percent certain about that.

“Barry, I love you. That's what I'm trying to tell you. I love you. I think . . . I think maybe I always loved you. But you were my high school buddy, and even though you were perfect for me, I never saw past that. Partly because I thought you were in love with Tiffany, but that's neither here nor there. I just didn't expect you to come into my life out of the blue. I didn't expect that everything I always wanted would be handed to me on a platter. So I was scared, and I was running from that.” Mikki finally took a much-needed breath. “But I'm not running anymore. I know what I'm feeling, and I'm not afraid of it. I want you. Please tell me that you want me too.”

The seconds that passed seemed like hours, the uncertainty threatening to overwhelm her.

But then a slow smile formed on Barry's sexy lips. He wrapped his arms around her and whispered hotly, “You know I want you.”

Relief bubbled through Mikki. “Oh, Barry.”

And then he brought his mouth down on hers and kissed her. Right there in the crowded airport, in the security line.

Cheers erupted around them. Oohs and aahs filled the air. It was Christmas Eve, a time when people were heading home to be with those they loved.

And Mikki was with the man she loved. He was the best Christmas present of all.

“I love you,” Barry told her.

“I love you too.”

“I know you're in Chicago, and I'm in New York, and I was worried about us not being able to make it workâ”

“I'm moving to New York,” Barry told her.

That stopped Mikki cold. “What?”

“I told you I was in New York because I'm heading up an advertising campaign. What I didn't tell you is that my firm was contemplating transferring me to the New York office.”

“You're kidding.”

Barry shook his head. “I think it's a go. I'm almost certain it is.”

Fate.
Everything was falling into place for them.

“And if it isn't a go, I can move to Chicago,” Mikki told him. “There's nothing holding me in New York. Not anymore.”

Barry framed her face. “We'll work it out.”

“Yes, we will.”

Because whatever it took to be with this man, Mikki would do it.

It may have taken nearly thirty-one years, but she had found the man she knew she was meant to be with forever.

A man with whom life would never be boring.