BY THE TIME Avery knocked on David’s door, her palms were slick with sweat. This was the first trip she’d made to the third floor since he’d lived here. She couldn’t name another time in her life when she’d ever been this nervous.

Not even that night beneath the bleachers when she’d narrowly escaped certain rape.

He was right. None of that mattered now. All that mattered was climbing the staircase without falling on her backside and letting David know how she had spent the past fifteen years holding on to the past because that was where she could find him.

God, how she loved him. She hadn’t carried a torch all this time, no. But the kindling for this fire had been laid so very long ago when he’d put his life on the line to save her from a harm that could’ve been irreparable. Now she was ready to strike the match.

The climb seemed to take forever. She supposed the fact that she was trying to keep David from hearing her had a lot to do with her snail’s pace. And not wanting him to hear her was really dumb since she was coming up with the intent of crawling into his bed.

Ugh, but this love business was so confusing.

Finally she was there, and she took a deep breath before she knocked once, twice, figuring if he was already asleep she didn’t want to wake him and two knocks should be enough even if she hadn’t knocked hard and maybe she should just forget it and go back—

The door opened. David stood there wearing ragged gray sweat shorts and a faded navy T-shirt with a Penn State logo. The shirt barely stretched over his chest or his biceps and the only thing she could think to say was, “When did you go to Penn State?”

He laughed cautiously, stepping back and gesturing her inside. She entered, watching as his expression ran the gamut from relief to pleasure to an emotion much more intense. One that seemed to mirror her own sense of her heart being unable to contain all she felt.

“I didn’t go to Penn State. I went to University of Texas in El Paso.” He could have gone to Harvard. To MIT. To any of several bastions of higher education.

“David, here’s the thing,” she said quickly, turning to face him without taking in a single detail of his apartment, knowing she had to get this out before she lost her nerve and scurried back downstairs. She felt so much safer when on the second floor than she did facing him now.

“The thing?” he echoed, closing the door while his gaze remained on her face.

“Yes. The thing.” She twisted her hands at her waist. “It’s killing me that I never lifted a single finger to intervene when things for you started going so badly downhill—”

And that was all she got out because he was there and his arms were around her and his mouth was there seeking out hers. The force of his kiss left her unable to breathe. He wrapped himself around her until she wasn’t sure a shadow could squeeze between their bodies.

She wasn’t truly aware that her feet had left the floor until she felt the back of her knees hit the edge of his sofa seconds before he followed her down to the cushions. His weight above her felt simply like another part of herself, and she pulled him down to cover her.

He shifted to the side; she urged him back, loving the bulk of his body, the press of his strength that took her deeper into the cushions. His chest was firm, the one shoulder pinning her rounded and hard. Their legs tangled, as did their arms, a hand stroking a hip, a shoulder blade, fingers twining together.

His mouth warmed her skin when he trailed kisses from her ear along her jaw to her chin. She nudged him, wanting his lips on hers, his tongue on hers, but he made her wait, nipping at the edges of her mouth just enough to make her want to hit him, and hard.

And so she did, smacking a hand as close to his bottom as she could manage. He chuckled, the sound rolling through her like thunder in the air, and then the lightning followed as he aligned their bodies hips to hips.

Bracing himself on his forearms, he kissed her the way she’d wanted, but he kissed her even more. Deeper and stronger yet with a tenderness she had never thought to feel. His tongue stroked along the length of hers until she swore she felt sparks pop and sizzle over her skin.

She squirmed beneath him, not seeking her freedom, simply wanting to touch him, to get him out of his clothes, to shed her own. She couldn’t wait to feel his skin, his strength, his beautifully hard body in all the places that mattered.

Right now she felt him most of all in her heart. The beauty he showed her body paled in comparison to the flood of emotion bringing tears to her eyes as he began to move, sliding down her body until his mouth hovered over her chest.

He raised his gaze then, his heavy-lidded eyes asking permission for more things than she knew to imagine. She nodded. She wanted them all, wanted him, David, and willingly surrendered.

The expression on his face darkened intensely. He slid farther down the length of her body, took hold of her shirt hem and raised it slowly, his tongue circling her navel as he bared her belly’s skin.

Blowing warm breath over the dampness he’d left, he made his way back up, taking her shirt with him. Once the hem reached her breasts, she grabbed hold and pulled it over her head. David slipped an arm behind her, releasing the clasp of her bra before returning to slowly uncover her.

The room’s cool air breathed across her skin. Her nipples grew taut in anticipation as she waited for his touch.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” he said, before swirling the barest tip of his tongue around one hard peak then moving to the other.

She arched her back. She didn’t want to talk. She only wanted to feel. “Shh.”

He chuckled against her skin. “Not much of a talker, huh?”

“Oh, I can talk,” she whispered breathlessly, gasping as he sucked harder. “I just can’t walk and chew gum at the same time.”

David raised to one elbow and stripped off his shirt. In the next second, she found herself breathless, faced with the broad expanse of his bare chest and shoulders instead of only teasing glimpses.

“Do you know how beautiful you are?” she asked, overwhelmed, swept away, by nothing more than looking at him like this.

His face solemn, he lowered himself to kiss her, his mouth opening to hers as he made the skin-to-skin contact she’d been dying for. He was warm, so incredibly warm. She shivered, feeling goose-flesh prickle her skin, feeling so much more, the smooth resilience of his bare flesh as she ran her hands all over him.

He lingered to kiss her, nipping, sucking, nibbling along her jaw, her neck, her collarbone to her shoulder, yet she was greedy for more. Heat built deep in her belly, between her legs, growing itchy and insistent. She swore she was going to scream.

She settled with slapping him on the backside. “You’re taking way too long.”

“Ah, darlin’. Judging by that love pat, I’d say I’m taking just long enough,” he said softly, his tone starting her to shivering all over again.

But finally he moved, sliding down her body, kissing his way around and beneath her breasts without paying the least bit of attention to the taut peaks of her nipples in spite of the way she arched upward and begged him to do. He just continued on his way to unbutton the waistband of her pants.

Once he’d released the button and slid the zipper down, he raised up to his knees and stopped, staring at her with an expression she wasn’t sure she could name. It was almost as if he wasn’t sure he should continue—which was ridiculous.

Making love to him, with him, was the fulfillment she’d been looking forever to find.

She pushed up to her elbows. “What’s wrong?”

David’s gaze swept her from belly to breast before settling on her face. His voice was a gruff tremor when he asked, “Why are you here?”

She longed to be flip, to continue their teasing banter of earlier but knew playtime was long gone. The next few moments could possibly be the most important of her life and deserved her full honesty. Yet she wasn’t sure she could give it. She was too lost to trust what she might say.

“I can’t talk now. I really can’t talk now,” she pleaded, lifting her hips and urging him to finish stripping her of her clothes. “Please, David. We’ll talk. I promise. But later. Later.”

He wasn’t happy about it. She was certain he wanted to hear of her feelings, yet she feared she would say anything to get her way. And that would hardly be fair.

He gave in at last, pulling both pants and panties from her legs. She lay bare before him, and his chest heaved with his effort to breathe. He muttered a curse as he shucked off the rest of his clothes, and then it was Avery’s turn to struggle and gasp.

She’d thought him beautiful before. Now she was without words to describe the gorgeous perfection of David’s body. She wanted to cry, moved to tears by the sweet and tender emotion of wanting him.

He returned to her then, settling his weight fully, his sheathed erection probing between her thighs. She opened for him, adjusting the angle of her hips, the position of her legs, shifting and squirming until he found her entrance and pushed slowly inside.

She cried out softly as he filled her, panting sharply in order to hold on. His gaze remained locked with hers, and she saw him waging the same battle for control. His jaw popped, his pulse throbbed in his temple. And just as she saw his eyes grow damp and redden, he buried his face in the crook of her shoulder and began to move.

She held him tightly, her heels pressed to his hips, her hands roaming his back in loving strokes. Her heart was so full, so full, and when joyous tears fell from her eyes she knew she could hold back no longer.

As David loved her, she loved him back. Their bodies moved together. The completion they reached came as one. She cried his name. He groaned in response, his hands beneath her bottom holding her tight for his finishing strokes.

And then she shuddered and collapsed, knowing that she had reached her future and would never return to the past.

EARLY THE NEXT MORNING, having come awake to an empty bed, David dressed and left the house. In the end, he and Avery had never talked. They’d done nothing more than move from couch to bed, where they’d spoken only with their bodies.

It had been a hell of a bad way to wake up, finding the side of the bed that she’d warmed all night ice-cold. Her scent remained on his pillows, in his sheets and blankets. He hadn’t even stopped to make a pot of coffee. He’d just gotten the hell out of Dodge.

Now, for the first time in fifteen years, he stood beneath the bleachers on the scruffy grass field behind Tatem High. The field wasn’t in a whole lot better shape now than it had been then. Such was the reality of the West Texas heat.

The bleachers, however, were new. They were still constructed of metal rather than the heavy-duty concrete found in larger school districts, but the wooden seats had been replaced with the same galvanized aluminum as the frames.

With the school year winding down and summer on the way, the grounds had been manicured to within an inch of their life for the upcoming graduation ceremony. He didn’t know why, when the dry heat baked graduates and attendees alike, the powers that be insisted on the tradition of sending seniors off into the big bad world with the setting sun at their back.

He could appreciate the symbolism, just not the temperature. And damn if he didn’t wish that he’d been able to graduate with his classmates from Tatem High.

No wonder Avery was hesitant to have anything to do with him. She’d finally bedded Tatem’s bad boy and now she could get on with the rest of her life. This sure as hell wasn’t the full circle David had hoped to complete when he’d returned last year to the town in which he’d grown up.

Having now taught in that same environment, he better understood his father’s decision to move them away from the rural area to one more urban, one where David wouldn’t stand out as either a prodigy or the troublemaker he’d become. Once in El Paso, he’d easily blended into the crowd; he’d run up against kids a hell of a lot smarter as well as a hell of a lot meaner. The experience had put Tatem into perspective.

Yet he’d never gotten over Avery Rice.

And here he stood, wondering what he was going to do now that it looked like she didn’t return his feelings. Move out of her house for one thing, he grumbled, hands stuffed in his pockets as he kicked at dry clods of dirt that went poof when he did.

He knew Yvette Lapp had a garage apartment for rent, except Yvette worked at Avery’s bakery and renting from her instead of Suzannah wouldn’t be a whole lot better. Since he obviously wouldn’t be showing Avery the West Coast this summer, moving while he had the time wouldn’t be a bad idea. Yeah. That’s what he’d do this next week. See about finding a place.

Packing wouldn’t take him much time at all since he’d never done more than a cursory move-in. He’d certainly never settled in, as if he’d been waiting to do so until he knew how things would go down between him and Avery. Judging by the past few days, they’d pretty much gone down like crap, he admitted, just as he heard the rumble of a diesel engine.

He looked up in time to watch Avery pull her big black Dodge Ram to a stop, and was hit with the incongruity of this woman driving this truck. Yes, it made perfect West Texas sense, but it was the only thought that came to mind that he could manage. Everything else was a blur.

When she cut the engine, he thought his heart had stopped as well. He couldn’t feel a single beat. And then he could feel nothing else, the pounding ringing in his ears as she climbed down from the monster, slammed the door and headed his way as if she’d known exactly where she’d find him.

“What are you doing here?” he asked when she stopped only a few feet away.

“I could ask you the same question,” she said, her hands shoved into the pockets of her denim shorts.

He shrugged. He wasn’t going to let her get to him. Not today. Not after last night. “Visiting old haunts. You know, remembering the good ol’ days.”

“You do seem to be getting the hang of small-town life again.”

“What do you mean?”

“You left your front door unlocked. I came back to bring you breakfast in bed.” She inclined her head, gesturing toward her truck. The smile on her face was as soft and gentle as any he’d ever seen. “I have coffee and hot croissants.”

He swallowed hard as he looked away, glancing toward the football field where he’d chased after her and made such a fool of himself. He was done with that. His days of being a fool were over. “Why are you here, Avery?”

“Oh, David. I came here for you. To be with you. To love with you.” Her voice broke and, as he turned toward her, her eyes grew wet. He watched as her throat seemed to choke off her ability to breathe. “You’ve been a part of my life for so long. Even the years that I didn’t see you…you were still there. In my heart. I just never knew why.”

“And now you do?” he asked, his tone rough, harsh, as if he were bracing himself for a blow.

She delivered it softly. “I love you, David. The boy you used to be got under my skin. But the man you are now has shown me the beauty of being alive. I want to be with you as long as you’ll have me.”

God. Now he was the one unable to draw a single breath. He opened his arms, and then she was there, holding him, loving him. And he said the only words his heart allowed him to say.

“Forever, Avery. Forever.”