LITMIR.BIZ

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was easy, from the vantage point of hindsight, to spin a perfect scenario. But life was seldom perfect. He knew that better than most. “Maybe not.”

      She released a breath, trying to keep from lashing out at him again. He wasn’t the target, he was just standing in the way. Making sense at a time when she didn’t want to have anything to do with sense. When she just wanted to vent.

      “Well, we’ll never know, will we?”

      “No,” he agreed quietly, “we won’t, and we can debate this until the cows come home and it still won’t make any difference.” He looked at her pointedly. “What makes a difference is that he’s here and you and your brother and your sister are each going to have to deal with that in your own way.”

      Suddenly she was drained and so very tired. “I don’t want to deal with it now.”

      She raised her head up to him and he saw that there were tears shimmering in her eyes. His heart constricted within his chest. At a moment like this, fairly or not, he could have readily done battle with her father for her.

      “I don’t want to deal with it now,” she repeated, her voice almost breaking.

      “Then don’t,” he whispered.

      Kevin took her into his arms and she let him, burying her face in his chest until she could regain control. Something that seemed very far out of reach right now. She hated herself like this, hated the fact that she was weak and that her father could still affect her this way. She was supposed to be above that. She wasn’t supposed to care if he lived or died or showed up here. None of that was supposed to matter anymore.

      So why did it?

      Why was there this awful ache inside her? This restless, disoriented feeling that she didn’t know what to do with?

      Her face against him, she sighed heavily. “Why did he have to show up now?”

      Her breath was warm as it traveled along his chest. He was having trouble remembering that his sole function right now was to comfort her, not to feel anything himself, other than empathy.

      It wasn’t easy.

      “I don’t think there could have ever been a good time, June.”

      He was right, she thought. It still didn’t make it easier.

      “No, but it would had to have been better than now. Max is really happy for maybe the first time in a long time. I don’t want anything to spoil that.” She raised her head and looked at Kevin, searching his face for a promise she needed. “Please don’t tell him that our father’s back.”

      In all good conscience, he didn’t feel he could make that promise. “June—”

      “Please,” she begged, “don’t tell him. I’ll tell him when I think the time’s right.”

      He didn’t know whether he believed her, and it was against his better nature to withdraw like this. Her family was now his family—it had been ever since Jimmy had married April. But his heart went out to her.

      “All right, I won’t tell,” he promised. “But I think you should warn Max. Warn him and April and your grandmother before your father approaches them. He didn’t come back to stay in the shadows.”

      She sighed deeply. He was right. Suddenly she felt lost and small. “Hold me, Kevin. Just hold me. I’m not sure I can stand up on my own.”

      “I’ll hold you,” he told her. “I’ll hold you for as long as you want me to.” His arms closed around her more tightly. “And I’ll talk to your father for you if you want.”

      She pressed her face against his chest, drawing strength from his warmth. Wishing she could vanish for a little while, until all of this was sorted out. “You’ll tell him to go away?”

      “If that’s what you want.”

      “You really are a knight in shining armor, aren’t you?”

      He could feel her smile as it crept along her lips and pressed itself against his chest.

      “Maybe not shining, and probably not even a knight—” he kissed the top of her head “—but I’m here for you if you need me.”

      “I need you,” she whispered.

Chapter Ten

      Her eyes were saying things to his heart that he was afraid to acknowledge. It led to places Kevin knew he wasn’t supposed to go.

      “I need you, Kevin,” she whispered again.

      He couldn’t help himself.

      There were a thousand different things he could have done in response.

      He did only one.

      Framing her face as if it were the most precious of treasures, he tilted June’s head up to his and pressed his lips against hers.

      He meant to do it lightly, gently, to assure her that he was here for her for as long as she needed. But the urgency with which the words were uttered broke through, tearing down the last of his own defenses.

      June wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Hard. Kissed him with all the swirling emotions that had been cut loose by the reappearance of her father in her life, by the catapulting of her very being into a cataclysmic abyss. She needed something to cling to, something stable to anchor her before she was lost to this darkness that was assailing her.

      She chose him.

      And held on for dear life.

      He felt drained. He felt invigorated. And most of all, he felt airborne. Sailing full tilt into a place that had been beckoning to him ever since the first time he’d kissed her.

      It was then, during that first kiss, that all the needs he’d put aside, all the emotions he thought had been anesthetized until they’d faded out of existence, had come alive and moved up to the front of the line, waiting for the moment they could be released.

      She couldn’t think. Down was up, out was in, everything seemed completely jumbled except for the most important thing. That she wanted this, needed this.

      Needed him.

      Right now, above all else, she needed him, needed this mad whirl he was responsible for that was going on in her head, going faster and faster until it stole her very breath away.

      She felt the kiss deepening and wasn’t entirely sure of her part in that, only of her reaction to it.

      He made her feel drunk with power, with excitement and so very safe she could have cried.

      Barriers were breaking down within him like fences built out of ice facing the full power of the summer sun. He caught hold of himself before it was too late. Before he couldn’t.

      “June—”

      But she wouldn’t let him say anything more. This time, it was she who framed his face, she who kissed him, blotting out the words of caution, of protest she was afraid were coming.

      “Don’t talk,” she begged him. “Just make love with me.”

      Make love with me.

      The invitation rose up, twelve feet high, before him. But rather than give in to the raging inferno that was singeing his very insides, Kevin forced himself to step back. He caught June by the shoulders, holding her in place.

      “I’m not going to let you do something you’re going to regret just because you’re upset.” It cost him more than she would ever know to say this to her.

      “I’m not upset,” June insisted. The intensity of her voice lowered as she added, her voice thick with emotion, “And I’m not ever going to regret this.”

      He knew

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