From This Day Forward by Candace Camp

Author:Candace Camp [Camp, Candace]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

THE PARTY ENDED promptly at eleven, when Rebecca announced to the guests who remained that the staff was waiting to clean the ballroom. “Don’t forget about the tennis and golf tournaments tomorrow,” she reminded everyone. “And the Eighties Bash begins tomorrow night at eight in this same room. Good night, everyone.”

She was relieved to see the last guest straggle out of the room. Glancing around to make sure she wasn’t forgetting anything, she followed them out.

Ryan waited by the elevator, his shoulder propped against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Though her heart tripped at the sight of him, she realized she wasn’t particularly surprised to see him there.

She pushed the button for the elevator. “Are you going up?”

“I thought I’d go out for a walk on the beach. To decompress from the party. Will you join me?”

She moistened her lips. “It’s getting pretty late.”

“Yeah.”

He continued to watch her, making no effort to pressure her into accepting.

She should tell him good-night. Go to her room. Get some sleep. And yet she knew she wouldn’t sleep a wink for thinking about him walking on that beach, his face silvered by moonlight, his shirt plastered against him by the ever present Gulf breeze.

She sighed. “I’ll change and meet you in the lobby.”

He nodded, his expression giving her no clue to his feelings about her acquiescence.

When she joined him in the lobby ten minutes later, she noted that he’d donned a light jacket. She had changed into jeans and a T-shirt and sweater, replacing her sandals with sneakers.

As she had predicted, it was cool out. A stiff breeze kicked the waves into white peaks that splashed against the sand near where they walked. Clumps of seaweed washed in by the waves covered the beach, and she had to watch her steps to keep from being tangled in it. The moon lit their path, supplemented by the lights from the resort behind them and a few businesses on the other side of the boulevard.

As tired as she had been at the end of the party, the walk was more refreshing than she had expected. She could almost feel the residual tension float away on the wind that tossed her hair and chilled her skin. Turning her face upward, she closed her eyes for a moment and let the sounds and smells of the water surround her.

When she opened her eyes again, Ryan was standing in front of her, looking down at her. She could almost feel time rewind, taking her back to another beach, another moonlit night. The night she realized that she had fallen completely in love with him, despite having known him only a matter of days.

She blinked hard and forced herself to return to the present. On this beach, this night, they weren’t two young people in the giddy early throes of love. They were former lovers who had split painfully, and there were two and a half years of distance between them now. Years in which she had established her own business, her own life in Lubbock.

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