Everything. He gave her everything.
She just hoped she hadn’t realized it too late.
Chapter 30
The storm warred directly overhead for three solid hours. Aidan knew this because he counted off every single minute.
And through it all he and Mitch had sat with their backs to the rock, their hoods up, heads down. Their gear was the best of the best, but the storm was crazy wild and no match for any gear.
Rain and seventy-five-mile-an-hour winds beat at them until sometime around midnight.
Then suddenly there was a lessening. And a promising gap without lightning.
And then finally came the radio call that he and Mitch had been waiting for—it was time to get out of this shit.
Aidan couldn’t agree more.
Twenty minutes later, Aidan rounded the top of the cliff, where he was immediately tackled by a bundle in a bright red jacket that was scented like Lily but looked like a wild woman.
They both toppled to the ground.
He sucked in a breath because, son of a bitch, he hurt from the tips of his hair to his toes and everything in between. But the pain faded when Lily clutched him, wrapping herself around him like a monkey.
She was shaking so hard she vibrated. “Guys,” he said to the crew who’d surrounded them. “Give us a minute.”
“No way in hell,” Mitch said. “Let’s get this show on the road. You two lovebirds can kiss and make up later, after we make the hike back to Incident Command.”
“A minute,” Aidan repeated.
“Fine.” Mitch tossed up his hands. “It’s your face that’s going to be permanently swelled up like the Goodyear blimp.”
Aidan ignored that and the two medics trying to get at him. “Lily.”
“Right here.” She very gently cupped his face. “Don’t be mad, we left Incident Command to be here once they gave the clear.”
“Tell me now,” he demanded.
“You’re bleeding.” She looked at someone at his other side, but Aidan didn’t take his eyes off of her. “He’s bleeding,” she said.
“I know,” Mitch told her. “It’s his stubborn head. But apparently none of us are going anywhere until you two have this out. So maybe you could speed things up a little bit, yeah?”
Again the medics tried to move in, but Aidan grated out through his teeth, “Wait.”
No one backed away, but no one dragged him off, either, which he took to mean he could have his damn minute. “Lily. Tell me now.”
She was still hugging him like it was her job, but she pulled back and stared into his eyes. Hers filled. “I love you.”
Yeah. That was what he needed. His entire body relaxed, and suddenly he could breathe as the knot in his chest loosened. The night was pitch black, and one eye had swollen shut, but he had no trouble seeing the shadow of the men hovering over him, trying to move in. He held on to her tight. “Again,” he said.
Her entire demeanor softened, and she bent over him to kiss him softly. “I love you. Always have. Always will.”
He felt the stupid smile split his face and his already split lip. “Shit.”
She let out a breath. “Okay, so now you’re going to stop growling at your team and let them take care of you,” she said firmly.
Mitch laughed, cutting it off only when Aidan glared at him.
Lily ignored the exchange and scooted back just enough to let the medics take over.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, and got to his feet, holding his arm across his chest funny.
“Damn,” Gray said on a heavily blown-out breath. “You tore the fucker again, didn’t you?”
“Yep,” Mitch answered for him. “Rotator cuff,” he explained to a shocked Lily. “It happened when he kissed the rock.”
“Fuck you,” Aidan said, and dropped back to his knees. “Aw, hell.”
“Aidan!” Lily cried, dropping to her knees, too, facing him.
“I’m okay.” He locked eyes with her and held the eye contact as the medics fussed over him, dabbing at the cuts on his face, carefully restraining his arm and shoulder from movement.
“We’re taking him to General,” one of the medics said to Gray.
“No, I’m fine,” Aidan said again.
“You’re going to the hospital,” Lily said.
“Going to be fun to watch you two butt heads,” Gray said, and Aidan realized both his brothers were leaning over them, shamelessly eavesdropping. “Even more fun will be giving Mom a new couple to obsess over and bug for grandchildren.”
They began the hike back to Incident Command before he could try to kill Gray. Once there, he was taken into the ambulance.
“Let’s get his shirt off,” one of the medics said.
“Women are always saying that to me,” Aidan murmured.
And then the truck was gone, off into the night.
Lily stared at it until it disappeared and still she stood there unmoving.
Well, that wasn’t exactly true. Her heart was moving. In fact, it was cracking. Because though Aidan had listened to her very carefully and taken in everything she’d said, he hadn’t responded in kind.
Nothing less than she deserved after doing the same thing to him. And if it had hurt him half as much as it hurt her, she didn’t know how she could ever make it up to him.
Hudson grabbed Lily’s hand. Gray took her other side. They led her back to their truck.
“We’re going to the hospital,” she said.
Neither man answered her.
“We are going to the hospital,” she said.
“You’re shaking and frozen. You need a shower and dry clothes,” Gray told her. “And rest.”
“Is that what you would do if Penny was hurt?” she asked. “You’d go home to rest?”
He grimaced.
“Exactly,” she said grimly. “Hospital it is.”
Aidan always marveled over the fact that he could be dead asleep one second and in the next completely awake, a brand-new day. As he shifted into awareness, everything flooded back to him. The rescue. Slamming himself into the wall like a novice. The long hours on the ledge while the storm beat at him and Mitch.
Lily.
The beeping and antiseptic smell told him he was still in the hospital, but the scent of Lily’s shampoo told him he wasn’t alone.
He opened his eyes and homed in on her like a beacon.
She leapt out of a chair and came to his side. “Hey,” she said, in her throaty morning voice that he loved so much. “You’re awake.”
Which was more than he could say for Hudson, who had his long body sprawled out in another chair, head back, mouth open, snoring lightly.
“He had a rough night, worrying about you,” she said.
Her gaze said she’d had the same rough night, and he shook his head, knowing how hard it must have been reliving the nightmare of Dead Man’s Cliff, where she’d lost Ashley. “You okay?” he asked.
“That was my question to you,” she said.
“I meant about what happened, and where,” he said. “There’s going to always be risky rescues, dangerous fire conditions—”
“I know,” she said softly.
“I don’t know how to ask you to be with someone who—”
“You’re not asking,” she said. “It’s my decision. I want to be with you, Aidan, just as you are, whatever your job is, whatever you do. I just hate that you got hurt—”
“I’m okay.”
Her fingers ran lightly over the splint holding his arm to his chest while her gaze settled on the side of his face, currently burning like fire. Didn’t need a mirror to know what he must look like.
“Are you?” she breathed. “Okay?”
“One hundred percent.”
She arched a brow and he couldn’t help it, he smiled, and … split his lip again. “Dammit,” he said, and brought his fingers up to it.
She caught his hand. “If you’re fine, and I’m fine … are we fine?”
“
You still love me?” he asked.
“So you do remember,” she breathed.
“Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I wasn’t sure,” she admitted, and he realized she was tense with nerves.
With some serious effort he lifted the covers in silent invitation.
She bit her lip. “It’s a hospital bed, I can’t—”
“Come here.”
She glanced at Hudson, found him still snoring, and then kicked off her shoes. “Are you sure I won’t hurt you?”
“He’s fine,” Hudson muttered, eyes still closed, body not moving a muscle. “But you’re killing me. Shut the hell up, the both of you. No talking until …” He opened one eye, looked at his watch, groaned, and said “until much later than seven a.m.”
They both ignored him.
“I remember everything,” Aidan told Lily, tucking her into him. “But you should tell me again just to be sure.”
She smiled. “Well, for starters, I love what happens to you in the morning.” She wriggled against the part of him that did seem to enjoy mornings more than any other part of him.
“Christ,” Hudson muttered. “Get a room.”
“We’re in a room,” Aidan said, sliding his one good arm around Lily. “You were saying?” he asked her. “Something about my good parts?”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Hudson pushed to his feet, glared at them, and strode out of the room.
“Thought he’d never leave,” Aidan said with a grin.
“He was worried about you,” Lily said. “We all worried about you. Aidan, I’m sorry I was so slow about things. But I meant every word I said to you last night. I want to stay in Cedar Ridge. I want to give us a real shot. I want to love you.”
He nodded, serious now. “For how long?”
“As long as you’ll have me.”
“Every day for the rest of my life,” he said immediately. “Does that work for you?”
Her eyes misted. “Works perfectly.”
Epilogue
Three months later
A little out of breath—more from nerves than exertion, Lily staggered to the top of Dead Man’s Cliff and went still.
“I did it,” she whispered. “I got here.”
Two warm, strong hands settled on her hips as Aidan pressed in behind her. “And you beat me while you were at it.”
She leaned back into him, staring out at the vista before her. Rugged mountain peaks in all their fall glory, a volatile blanket of green laced with blue ribbons of rivers and tributaries.
Closer, in fact directly beneath her, lay the jagged rocky cliffs where all too many had found their end.
Her heart squeezed. Ashley had been one of them. She pulled the scarf from around her neck, hugged it to her heart, and then tossed it into the chasm. The wind caught it, held it aloft for a few heartbeats, and then it vanished from view.
Lily closed her eyes a moment, letting the emotion wash over her. Good-bye, Ashley, I’ll never forget you …
She let the sun warm her face, let the mountain air fill her lungs. Let the ever-steady, amazing man at her back make her feel strong. “Thanks for helping me get here.”
“I didn’t help you,” he said, his voice a low, warm rumble in her ear. “But I enjoyed the hike, and the company.”
She smiled. She always did with him.
“Can you feel it?” he asked.
“What?”
“Winter on the air. You did this just in time, babe. Snow’s coming.”
“Haven’t seen snow here in a long time,” she said, feeling a nostalgic yearning to do just that, to watch it come down in snowflakes the size of dinner plates, watch as it accumulated into twenty-foot drifts, covering everything, making the trees appear as two-hundred-foot-tall ghosts.
And since Cassandra had decided not to come back to work after having her baby, Lily had a job at the salon for as long as she wanted it. Jonathan had given her carte blanche to continue to fix the place up, especially since it wasn’t coming out of his bank account.
Aidan’s arms came around her, warm and sure. “You’re okay?” he asked.
She took one last look at the view that had dogged her memories and dreams for a decade and then turned in the circle of Aidan’s arms to face him. “More than okay. I’m … at peace. Excited for whatever comes next.” Going up on tiptoes, she kissed him softly before pulling back to look at him.
Aidan hadn’t had it easy in the past few months. Jacob was still out there, injured and hopefully recovering, but he’d made no contact with his brothers, which was pretty much killing them. As for the resort, there’d been no magic solution to save it, but none of them had given up that fight. They still had nine months. The toll of that worry was dragging on him, on all of them, but she liked to think that she helped him. “And you, Aidan? You okay?”
He lowered his head and kissed her. Not softly. They were both breathing unevenly when he pulled back and met her gaze. “Depends.”
“On what?” she wanted to know.
“What happens next. With us.”
Her breath caught. “What do you want to happen next?”
“Me? That’s easy. I want to fall asleep with you at night and wake up wrapped up in you in the mornings.” He smiled and lifted a shoulder. “Anything else is just icing, babe. A ring. A white picket fence. Babies. Whatever you want.”
She stared at him. “Whatever I want? You can’t just offer me whatever I want.”
“Of course I can.” His eyes were intense now. Serious, smile gone. “Just name it.”
“There’s really only one thing,” she said.
He waited with characteristic patience.
“I just need you to love me,” she whispered.
“For the rest of my life,” he promised.
Chapter 1
The wind whistled through the high mountain peaks, stirring up a dusting of snow as light as the powdered sugar on the donut that Hudson Kincaid was stuffing into his face as he rode the ski lift.
Breakfast of champions, and in three minutes when he hit the top of Cedar Ridge, he’d have the adrenaline rush to go with it. He only had time for one run before this morning’s board meeting, aka fight with his siblings, and he was going to make it Devil’s Face, the most challenging on the mountain.
Go big or go home, that was the Kincaid way.
Danger, excitement, and adrenaline rushes were par for the