Now she just had to be patient.
Problem was, she’d never really mastered the act of patience. So she called Stone. “I need a favor.”
“Good,” he said. “So do I.”
Harley’s conversation with Stone rang in her head for the rest of the day. They’d made a deal. She’d take a temporary job with Wilder until she figured out what the hell she wanted to do with her life, but she wanted to start by going to Alaska to meet up with TJ. Unpaid, of course.
Stone had countered her offer. He was hiring, temporary as she insisted, but she would be paid starting immediately, and she had to trust him because there was a quick little trip she had to help him out with first.
She was taking a small group up Squaw Peak for an impromptu sunset wedding. Her job was to get the bride and the pastor there and be the photographer for the happy event. Nick flew them up and landed on Eagle Rock, a gorgeous plateau, then flew off again to go pick up the groom at some undisclosed location.
Harley led Lydia-the bride-and the pastor to a higher, smaller plateau, where watching the sun set would be like sitting on top of the world. There she sat on the five-hundred-foot-high cliff and fiddled with her camera as she absorbed the view.
Behind her, Lydia was sitting, chatting quietly with her pastor. Harley had already taken several nice shots of them. She heard the chopper and knew Nick was back with the groom. It would take them thirty minutes or so to climb up there.
Harley took some shots of God’s glory spread out before her, then slowly lowered the camera as the truth hit her. She’d heard people talk of life-altering decisions before, but until that moment, sitting in the late afternoon sun with the whole world at her feet, she’d never really gotten it.
She belonged there.
She belonged there with TJ.
Even more of a revelation-she was irrevocably, desperately, 100 percent in love with him.
And he hadn’t called her back.
To be fair to him, he was out in the middle of nowhere, literally, no doubt with absolutely zero reception. He probably didn’t even know she’d called him yet. “You are such an idiot,” she said out loud. “A very slow idiot.”
Just then, a set of unbearably familiar battered boots and two long, denim-covered legs appeared in her field of vision. “If I agree, are you going to argue with me?”
With a gasp, she looked up and faced…who else…the only man who’d ever stopped, and then kick-started, her heart with a single look. “TJ! What are you doing here?”
He squatted in front of her. “Thought I’d drop by, say hi.”
She choked out a shocked laugh. “But your client-”
“He’s the groom. He decided he was crazy not to follow his heart.”
She felt her heart surge. “I know the feeling.”
His eyes warmed. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.” She drew a deep breath. “I missed you. I’m so sorry I left your cabin like I did. I shouldn’t have done that.”
“You mentioned an epiphany.”
“I don’t want to say good-bye.”
He nodded, and ran a finger over her jaw. “Is there anything you do want?”
“You.”
“You already have me.”
“No, I mean…more than just…”
“Casual?”
“Yes,” she whispered, talking fast, as if that could help her make him understand. “Here’s the thing. I can’t seem to breathe without you. And I really need to breathe, TJ.”
His lips twitched, his eyes warmed. “Harley,” he said very softly, and she nearly lost it.
“No, listen,” she said. “I know you didn’t want-that we said-”
He took one of her waving hands in his and pressed it to his chest. Beneath, she could feel the steady beat of his heart, and it helped calm hers. “Me too, Harley. All of it. I want you so damn much. I want to be with you, only you. I want everything that you can give me.”
“What about your trips?”
“I can take ’em or leave ’em. What I can’t do without is you.”
She felt the smile and the tears rush together, and she became utterly and completely sure of at least one thing. “Not casual.”
He shook his head solemnly. “There’s nothing casual about how I feel about you.”
She lurched up and pretty much threw herself at him, crawling up his body. Rising to his full height, he had one arm beneath her butt, the other across her back and right there on top of the world he kissed her, claimed her. In response, she sank her fingers into his hair, pouring out everything she had, all the heat, affection, frustration, fear, love…all of it into that one kiss.
“Ahem,” Nick said from behind them. “The pastor said we’re on the five-minute countdown.”
They kept kissing.
Nick sighed. “You two do realize there’s no closet door this time, right? That we can all see you?”
TJ slowly let Harley slide down his body, taking a minute to scrape his teeth over her jaw, and when she moaned, he let out a low growl of appreciation and bent his head again, but Nick stepped close and slapped a hand on his chest.
Without taking his eyes off Harley, TJ said, “We have five minutes. You just said so yourself.”
Nick shook his head and walked away.
Grinning.
TJ pulled some papers out of his pocket. Harley’s employment papers, the ones she’d filled out earlier for Stone. “I found these.”