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  His skin tasted of salt, sweat and musk, and it got her even drunker as their chests rose and fell together, trying to find a compatible cadence. Her nipples were tender and raw against him, and nothing had ever felt better.

  She struggled for air, holding him tighter as a tremor buzzed her belly, then her limbs.

  As their breathing leveled, she kept holding him, knowing it was almost time to let go.

  But the more she clung, the flimsier her reasons for leaving him behind seemed.

  That would wear off, she thought, calling upon the practicality that had gotten her through school, through the heartache of giving up her business and freedom, to go back to Parisville.

  It would have to wear off, or she’d go insane.

  His mouth moved to a tender spot below her ear, and she hoped he didn’t think that one last fling had changed her mind.

  She closed her eyes, hating herself, but knowing she’d feel the same way if she chose him over her family, too.

  Powerless, she thought. Love shouldn’t leave her this way.

  As if sensing the train of her thoughts, Tristan’s muscles tensed and in the endless heartbeat of their silence, the rebel in Juliana goaded her to imagine what it might be like to finally come out to her family—to stand up for who she was and what she might want if she could only have it.

  But even after the mantra of saying goodbye to Girl Friday she’d infused herself with on this trip, she’d only been kidding herself.

  “So this is it,” he said against her skin.

  She spoke into his hair, holding him tighter. “This has to be it.”

  As he hugged her to him, she told herself that they were doing the right thing.

  Even if it left her empty inside.

  “JULIANA, DO YOU HAVE the hammer and nails?” Sasha asked, walking into the box-strewn living room of her apartment two weeks later. Even though she was dressed in sweats, she managed to look as put together as ever. A brisk ocean breeze floated through the open window and wisped the hair curling down to her shoulders.

  But maybe the togetherness was due to the smile that never seemed to leave Sasha’s face now that she’d decided to move just a half hour away from Parisville, to a town near the Pacific coast.

  Juliana, who was sitting on the red faux-leather sofa, raised the hammer to her friend. “Here it is, Sash.”

  “Perfect.”

  The other woman was carrying a cityscape-inspired watercolor that she’d found in a Tokyo flea market and had had shipped home.

  After Juliana had returned to the States, Sasha and Chad had stayed an extra week, doing more research for her book by staying in their own ryokan and taking moonlight walks during which they’d discovered more exotic surprises. They’d be going back soon for a much longer trip, after Sasha got settled.

  She climbed on the sofa barefoot and positioned the painting this way and that on the wall. “So what do you think? Is it a good centerpiece for the room or should I go with something more Elvis on velvet?”

  “Either or.” Juliana barely even glanced at the painting. She never wanted to see a watercolor again.

  Her friend caught her absentmindedness right away, lowering herself and the painting back to the sofa to give Juliana her full attention.

  “You’ve become the mopiest moper who ever moped, and I have no idea how to snap you out of it.” Nonetheless, Sasha snapped her fingers in front of Juliana’s face, as if that would perform a miracle.

  Juliana hated being a moper, so she did her best to perk up. But she knew it was just her latest façade.

  Hadn’t she decided to drop it?

  But that was hard, knowing Tristan had been back home for a while, also. Besides, her family wasn’t exactly in the best of moods, and going to work most days with a good deal of the Thomsen clan was like treading through a bog.

  Sasha sighed. “If you and the rest of the family are this bummed out now, I’d hate to see you guys in an hour.”

  “Oh, believe me, there’ll be nothing but fireworks then.” The Coles were throwing a big shindig at the community center by the town square, where Dream Rising would be the guest of honor.

  Her family was taking great exception to the Coles’ gloating, and there was bound to be some trouble in Parisville. Juliana had heard the older crowd whispering, and she just knew they would do something mortifying like crashing the party or at least hanging around near it to show that they could still face the Coles.

  She wondered if Tristan would be there, if, maybe, they could look at each other across the chaos and laugh, knowing they were above this.

  But if that were true, wouldn’t she have the guts to be with him?

  Dammit, she wished she did have the guts, because living without him wasn’t working. She couldn’t stop thinking about him, feeling him against her, sinking into near depression when she told herself that he would never be touching her again. She missed the way he laughed, missed how adventurous she felt when she was with him.

  Sasha rested her painting against the side of the couch. “And here I thought Japan had… I don’t know. Changed things.”

  “For you.”

  “And you.” Sasha’s gaze was no-nonsense. “But I guess you were just all talk about freedom and exploration.”

  Juliana jerked at that because it was true. After feeling so different on the trip, she’d come back to the same old life, the same old thing that she’d been so intent on escaping.

  And she was already sick of it. Hell, she’d been sick of it the first day back, when she’d been met at the airport with good-try-but-no-cigar disappointment by her aunt and five cousins. They hadn’t blamed her for missing out on Dream Rising exactly, but the reminder of her failure had been there just the same.

  She’d wanted to shout at them: “There’s so much more in the world than this small-minded crap!” But how could she say that when she didn’t have the courage to break out of the Thomsen mold fully herself?

  Sasha had placed her hand on Juliana’s arm, as if to soften her comment, but it still rang through her.

  That’s when Chad wandered in, comfortable in old blue jeans, a Coldplay T-shirt and his glasses. His sandy hair was ruffled, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “Erm…” he said, “I couldn’t help overhearing from the other room…”

  Sasha got up from the couch and sidled up to him, tapping his chest in mock chastisement.

  “Spying on the enemy camp?” she asked.

  They both laughed. These days, Chad had better things to invest himself in than a family feud.

  “Listen,” he said, talking to Juliana, “if it makes you feel any better, since Tristan got back, he hasn’t come out of either his personal garage or the business one in town. He even cut his own Japan trip short, sticking around just long enough to meet with his vintage-car client.”

  The news didn’t make her feel any better. She hated that Tristan had gone back to his old ways, too.

  Sasha hugged Chad, causing Juliana’s heart to ache.

  “If you’ve been listening closely, Jules,” her friend said as she rested her head against Chad’s shoulder. “My man here was trying to tell you that Tristan’s just as destroyed as your sad self. He’s head over heels for you, and you’re the same way for him. If love isn’t worth fighting for, what is?”

  She didn’t tell them that she asked herself this over and over, arguing that she’d chosen love of her family.

  But Sasha was right: how often did love come around?

  Wasn’t it worth seeing if it was time for a change with everyone?

  Her heart kicked at her chest, and Juliana put her hand there to calm herself.

  What if Emelie and Terrence had swallowed their pride and run to each other—him not expecting her to settle for being a secret mistress and her not faulting him for considering the arranged marriage?

  What if they had confronted his family and told them that they had no option but to work with it?

  Sasha’s voice
urged Juliana on. “Jules…?”

  Juliana glanced up to see both Sasha and Chad watching her, as if all they wanted was for her to get the hope permanently back into her own gaze.

  She remembered wanting the same for Sasha once upon a time.

  Don’t let history repeat itself, she thought.

  “Is Tristan planning to come out of his garage today?” Juliana asked. “Or do I have to hunt him down like we did that painting?”

  Sasha and Chad broke into huge smiles as Juliana’s pulse broke free.

  A WASTED SATURDAY, Tristan thought as he lounged on a metal chair in the corner of the community center, buried behind the throng of jubilant Coles who’d come from near and far to party in Parisville.

  There was wine and beer in raised glasses, the aroma of buffalo wings and other party grub lacing the air, cheery social voices. There were even streamers draped from the ceiling, and above it all, on the dais, Dream Rising reigned.

  His relatives kept toasting him, and he kept doing it back, his heart hardly in it.

  Not when he missed her so much.

  Juliana.

  The brightness of her hair, the color of her eyes… Everything else seemed drab in comparison.

  Strange, he thought, how they’d found each other all the way over in Japan, and yet here in this small town, they were farther apart than ever.

  His mother, who had wound her black hair, burgeoning with glints of silver, in a bun, smiled at him as she brought Gramps over in his wheelchair. The old man had always favored his daughter-in-law above all the others, and after Tristan’s dad had died, the two had become closer than ever, with her acting as his nurse.

  The old man, his shriveled legs bent together as if they were two thin branches leaning on each other for support, beamed at his grandson.

  “Tristan,” he said. “The man of the hour.”

  Tristan’s heart swelled at the joy in his grandfather’s bright eyes, but it was short-lived when he realized that the happiness was only based on a damned picture.

  He only wished Terrence and Emelie could be here to tell everyone that this was nothing to celebrate at all.

  His mom seemed to know something was amiss with him—it was there in her gray eyes. Maybe she recognized a broken heart so well because she’d been carrying one around with her ever since his dad had passed on.

  “Join the party,” she said. “We’ve missed you.”

  Miss, he thought. Nobody here but her probably understood the meaning of that as well as he did.

  “I’ll just keep taking things in over here, if it’s all the same,” he said.

  “Now, now,” Gramps said. “The hero shouldn’t be put in a corner.”

  As his mom turned his grandfather around in his chair, she gave Tristan a sympathetic glance, and he smiled to assure her that nothing was wrong.

  Nothing except everything.

  The party went on, and under the smooth stereo voice of Frank Sinatra, Tristan noticed that Chad and Sasha had arrived and were trapped near the door by some New York cousins.

  Soon afterward, the chatting and carousing came to an abrupt stop.

  Then someone turned off the music.

  Tristan stood, spying the cause of the disturbance right away.

  Thomsens.

  A group of them had wandered into the community center, just as casual as could be, holding their own wine bottles and waving at everyone as if they’d been invited.

  Juliana? he thought, starting forward, thinking she might be with them, before he told himself to stop.

  Tristan sank back onto his chair. Of course she wasn’t here, and it was pathetic that he could barely bring himself to move without her around.

  Shit. He should’ve done something two weeks ago—should’ve gone with his gut and told her that she did things to him that he’d never experienced with a woman before; she made the world come alive, made him want to see more of it rather than keeping himself under the dimness of a car.

  Yet he’d gone and accepted the alternative once again, just like a whipped boy who didn’t have a brave bone in his body.

  Why?

  Why accept it, when that’s what had gotten Terrence and Emelie into such trouble?

  Out of the corner of his eye, Tristan saw that his mom was wheeling his grandfather onto the stage in reaction to the Thomsens.

  She halted his chair at the foot of Dream Rising.

  Naturally, Tristan thought. Gramps wouldn’t kick out the Thomsens. He’d do everything he could to revel in the painting—the Coles’ victory.

  A murmur came from the crowd, a tense undertow from both families.

  Then he heard it—the voice floating through his memories during every waking hour.

  “It just goes on and on, doesn’t it?”

  Was he…? Had he just heard…?

  His heartbeat suspended.

  He turned around, and the sight of her—the punch of her violet eyes—almost took him down.

  Speechless. Frozen with such emotion he could hardly contain it.

  “And,” Juliana added, “it might just keep going on, with or without us.”

  She didn’t have to say the rest.

  I’m standing up for what I want now, and it’s you.

  Overcome, he took her in his arms, lifting her and plastering her body to his as his pulse zoomed once again.

  And, in front of everyone, Tristan Cole kissed Juliana Thomsen, just as he’d wanted to do over fourteen years ago.

  12

  AS TRISTAN’S MOUTH CRUSHED Juliana’s, she spun down a rabbit hole, dizzy and full of bursting sensations.

  They were finally claiming each other, no matter the consequences, and with every moment, the shadows stripped away from her as she fell down and down to where a light gaped at the end of the hole.

  And she plunged into it headfirst.

  Out of breath, she came up for air, but she still kept her lips against his as they both smiled, giddy.

  “So this is it?” he asked, an echo of that day they’d said goodbye in the ryokan.

  She laughed, kissed him again.

  Someone in the back of the room shouted, but she didn’t know what they said. Then someone else at the front of the room called out.

  While kissing the man she was meant for, she’d almost forgotten the feud.

  As she and Tristan turned their heads to the rising rumble, keeping their cheeks against each other’s, Juliana’s vision cleared enough to see fingers pointing at them. Even Tristan’s grandfather, who was still on the stage, was trying to get out of his chair in his effort to make sure his own voice was heard above the rest.

  But, next to him, Tristan’s mom was smiling.

  At that point, everything went into motion as the yells unmuddled themselves in Juliana’s brain, turning into actual words:

  “Tristan, you dumbass.”

  “Juliana, what the hell are you doing?”

  Then she saw Chad and Sasha making their way through the crowd, playing peacemakers.

  While the voices erupted around them, Tristan let Juliana slide down the front of his body, where she felt every last muscular inch of him against her.

  Home, she thought.

  “Consequence time,” he said to her over the noise.

  “How about we get the hell out of here?” she said, inclining her head toward the nearest exit.

  His smile just about took her out at the knees as he grabbed her hand.

  They parted the crowd, ignoring every question on their way to the door. It took only a few seconds to get out of the cacophony and into his gleaming red pickup.

  As a few curious partygoers followed them into the parking lot, Tristan burned rubber out of there.

  Head tilted back in laughter—genuine, cleansing and so right—Juliana didn’t ask where they were going.

  She didn’t care, as long as she was with him.

  Only a mile down the road her mirth gave way to the same nerves that had been twanging at her, just
before she’d entered the community center with the rest of her clan to seek out Tristan among the crowd.

  He was quiet, too.

  She held to the edge of her seat. “I wouldn’t be surprised if our families showed up on both of our doorsteps within the hour.”

  “Let them.”

  He sounded so cocksure about being able to handle anything that she absorbed his confidence.

  This man did that for her, she thought. He made her want to be her own person for the first time in her life because she felt sure that he’d be worth the risk.

  They were heading for the Cole ranch, down a dirt road lined with shading oaks, pristine white fences framing horses that meandered over the grass, then they turned into a stretching driveway.

  Soon they arrived at a rustic cabin with a detached garage on the side and a wooden glider squatting on the porch. Straightforward and stalwart.

  Tristan’s place.

  Once again, anxiety skipped over Juliana, because this cabin was him. She would be entering his private domain—not a hotel room or somewhere that was merely convenient for a few hours of fun—and it seemed like the hugest step she’d ever taken anywhere.

  He got out of the truck, came around to her side, then opened the door for her.

  As he stood there, with the warm inland wind tousling his dark hair, Juliana’s limbs went light. He made her feel weak, but a good kind of weak.

  He held out his hand to her, just as he’d done that day in front of the love hotel, inviting her over a different, even scarier threshold.

  But this time, when she inhaled as she took hold of him, it wasn’t because she was going against her family.

  It was because she knew he would leave her breathless and she was preparing herself.

  And—boom!—his fingers really did send shock waves through her as he helped her out of the truck, catching her and swinging her around, then bringing her up against his broad chest.

  She buried her face in his neck, inhaling the scent of him—bay leaves, earthy, heady…

  Oh, man.

  Holding her, he walked her to his cabin, carrying her up the stairs as if she weighed close to nothing.