We have all experienced that lightening flash moment when love strikes us down, when we know without a shadow of a doubt that we're in love...and only hope it's reciprocated by our beloved. Today we're sharing a glimpse inside the romance novel In Between where that moment is captured perfectly.
"Everything we have here is
perfect," she whispered with sudden tears shimmering in her eyes and
appearing like shards of gold in the candlelight. "I paint, we travel, you
spar with Ava, we make love morning, noon, and night, we do whatever we want
when we want to do it. No one interferes with us. Back home...it will be
different. I know I suggested me tying up loose ends and leaving it all behind,
but once I get there it won't be as easy to leave as I'd like to believe."
He wanted to understand, but didn't.
Obviously, she omitted details. Then again, maybe he didn't comprehend her
concern because he had never had a hometown and his family had always been
accepting of anything he had ever imagined trying. He didn't know what it meant
to have a 'home,' not in the grand scheme anyway. Wherever his parents were
became a destination for holidays and special occasions. He stored some things
in Brussels at his grandmother's house, but other than that, no one he knew
would ever think it odd for him to travel or to love.
But he wanted that home base. He
wanted to travel and explore, but he dreamed of coming home to someone who missed
him and who wanted to hear his stories.
"Credere nell'amore," she said with a crooked grin.
"I do believe in love," he
replied. "What am I going to do with you, Jessica Moriarty? You're
maddening."
"You know exactly what to do with
me, Jacques Sinclair." Her grin turned wicked in a heartbeat.
"I want to know the details about
you, all of them, not just the pretty ones, but the dark ones, too. I won't run
away." He reached across the table and snagged her hand in his. "I am
more worried that you will run away because you are assuming things about me
that are not true. Love is the beginning, but we need trust to go all the
way."
She squeezed his fingers and focused
on their joined hands. "I don't want either of us to give up who we are
for the sake of each other. I don't want to stall your career...and I don't
want to feel like my old life is too small for you to be happy."
"I will never make you give up
anything for me."
"Yet you've already given up South
Africa for me."
"Oh, my God. Not South Africa
again." He pulled his hand free of hers and shook his head.
"And London. Simone told
me—"
"Stop it, Jess." He gave her
his best Do-Not-Go-There look before refilling his wine glass.
She leaned back in the chair, folded
her arms across her chest, and once again looked toward the sea where the
cruise ship had made little progress on its voyage.
"I push people away, it's what I
do. Kind of like a thing, I
guess." She shrugged, her voice quiet. "I grew up always needing to
be the adult from as far back as I can remember. I watched my mom transform
like a chameleon for any man who paid attention to her. I don't blame her...she
is how she is...my life is good now, I'm not complaining. I have it all, you
see. I live in a gorgeous apartment in an enviable location. I love my friends
and landed a prestigious job in my chosen field. Now I have you and it all
seems too good to be true. I thought I could simply fly home and let it all go,
but that feels wrong, too. I want to paint my days away, but I hear all the
words from people in my past telling me how silly that is. I also love
architecture and worked hard to be the best—"
"Why can't you be both?" He
frowned, truly not understanding the dilemma and wishing he could. "I love
you, Jess, not what you do as a
profession."
"That's just a piece of the
problem, Jacques. I'm all my mom has." She shook her head and looked
exasperated. "I confuse myself over and over again about what's right and
wrong. Traveling the world with you feels like a dream, but so does bringing
you home with me and making it all work out. An impossible dream."
"Nothing is impossible." He
shrugged, frustration drumming in his skull as to what to do to make her
understand that he truly believed that they could make it work.
"You're the ultimate dreamer,
Jacques, and I love you for that," she whispered, eyes glistening with
unshed tears. "I'm torn between what my heart wants and what my brain
believes. So I will probably try to push you away again and again. Don't let me.
Keep being stubborn and don't let me go no matter what bullshit I spout off."
He hesitated a moment while he
digested her words before laughing. "You are fascinating, have I told you
that? And crazy, that's obvious. My fascinating lunatic."
"Doesn't say much about your
judgment, does it?" She shrugged again, the wicked grin returning. "Now
you're going into this with your eyes wide open. My life is messy back home.
Marc is trouble, always has been. People think we're going to get
married."
His laughter faltered. "Married?
Why would they think that?"
"Because it fits into their
plans, but not mine."
"I've never been missed." He
blurted it out because he wanted her to know that he didn't leave a charmed
life like she believed. "People in my life are used to me being gone so
they do not miss me. I disappear for months on end and no one bats an eye
because they say, 'oh, that is just Jacques.' I am not attached to anything
except my work."
"You have Ava." She faced
him again, this time cupping her wine glass with both hands.
"She expects me to go, just as I
expect her to go." He thought of Simone's accusations about 'slumming' it
at the apartment building and pretending to be less than what he was. "We
are blessed with wealth and with worldly parents who raised us as citizens of
the world. But do you know what I dream of?"
She shook her head no.
"A home where someone expects me
at a certain time and misses me when I am not there." He felt embarrassed
at the admission and broke eye contact. "Sometimes when I travel I hear
men on the phone with their wives and they are telling them about their day and
assuring them that they will be careful. I hear them complain about
it—sometimes—but I know they like having that connection with someone who looks
at the stars at night and wonders what constellation the other one sees."
He fiddled in his pocket for another
cigarette. For someone who had pushed her for confessions, he suddenly wished
he'd kept his mouth shut.
"Ava loves you."
"Oh, I know." He lit the
cigarette and watched the stern of the cruise ship distance itself from shore.
"We all love each other. My family is very close in that way, but we do
not wonder about each other. Never mind. I am not explaining myself well.
Forget it."
"You want someone to curl up with
on the sofa after a long journey, someone who has been counting the days until
you return so she can hear your stories and thank God you're okay," she
whispered with a slow smile. "I want to be that person."
He smoked his cigarette and fought the
urge to leap across the table and hug her, but stopped himself. After all, he
had an image of cool and aloof romantic European to uphold. Grinning, he
shrugged and exhaled a stream of smoke.
"So, Jacques Sinclair, getting
back to that whole what-are-you-going-to-do-with-me question..." she finished
the wine in her glass without looking away from him.
Oh, he knew exactly what he wanted to
do with her.
"Portami a letto," she said with a smile, her long hair billowing around
her as she wiggled her finger at him in a come-to-me motion.
"Take me to bed," he
repeated in English, his gaze moving over her body with territorial pride.
"Gladly."
He tossed more than enough money to
pay the bill onto the table, propped it beneath the wine bottle, and followed
her off the narrow deck of the restaurant.
He paused at the top of the stairs and
looked up at the stars. Yes, he wanted her to be the one who looked at the
constellations and missed him.
"What are you waiting for?"
She called to him from the bottom of the stairs, her yellow dress shaping her legs
in the wind. "Portami a letto!"
He laughed at the people who looked at
her as if she'd lost her mind. She was his kind of crazy beautiful.
"Bossy American," he
muttered when he got close enough for her to hear him.
She stepped backward out of reach, arms
outstretched, and said, "Credo nell'amore!"
I believe in love!
He jogged to catch her after she
abruptly turned and ran toward their small hotel down the narrow street.
Snatching her around the waist, he crushed his mouth against hers and prayed
that she truly believed and wasn't simply lost in the moment because he'd never
wanted anything or anyone as much as he wanted her.
Keep reading In Between, book one of the 2-part Dancing Barefoot Series
Back cover blurb...
In between responsibilities and dreams...
Jessica Moriarty has always played by the rules, but for once in her life, she's doing exactly as she pleases. In between graduate school and 'real life', she's in Florence, Italy, indulging her love of art and abandoning inhibitions.
Meeting Jacques Sinclair rocks her off center. Whereas rules and living up to expectations have dictated her life, he is the opposite. A rebel. A photographer. A man who lives for the moment. He sweeps her up into a riveting romance that makes her question all she's ever believed to be true.
The drum of old commitments echo through her heart as time ticks away. Will the crush of 'real life' undermine the love she's found in between...?
