Now and Forever Read Online Free

having a terrible time remembering that fact with him standing there next to her, close enough for her to breathe in the smell of his skin.
    He retreated to the wooden stool. "Is this good enough?"
    "It's fine."
    "I don't want to get in your way."
    "You're not in my way any longer."
    There was no way on earth the air-conditioning system could keep pace with the heat building inside her body. They'd been divorced for almost five years. Wouldn't you think she'd be immune to him by now?
    She cleared her throat. "There's   a TV in the front room."
    "I'll pass."
    "You could catch the end of local news."
    "Not interested."
    She bent lower over the uniform, squinting against the harsh glare of a high-intensity light clamped to the side of the work table.
    He didn't like the way she made him feel, off-balance and hungry for something he couldn't put a name to. Something he knew he could never have.
    The hunger was soul deep and it scared the living hell out of him. From the first moment he'd seen her, pinning a satin dress to a skin-and-bones model in a Hollywood costume studio, he'd known Emilie represented the one thing in the world he could never have.
    Their courtship had been as swift and wild as a summer storm and their impulsive wedding had been the act of a desperate man, hell-bent on hanging onto something he really didn't understand but couldn't live without.
    Yet somehow she'd always managed to elude him. He'd known her body intimately but he'd never quite managed to touch her soul and he probably never would.
    "Look," he said, approaching the work table again, "maybe this wasn't such a great idea. I've got a long drive ahead of me. I better get going."
    "What about the uniform?"
    "Keep it," he said. "I'll pick it up when I get back."
    "Don't trust me with this, Zane." She turned around to face him. "This might be a piece of history."
    He arched a brow. "I thought you said that was impossible."
    "Lots of things are impossible. That doesn't mean they don't happen anyway." She smoothed her hands over the chest of the uniform jacket, palms tingling from the scratch of wool. "Try it on. I need to see how it drapes."
    He gestured toward a mannequin in the far corner of the room. "Let your pal try it on."
    "I need to see it in motion."
    She held up the jacket for him to slip his arms into the sleeves. "I know it's none of my business any more, but you really should do something about that attitude of yours."
    "I assume that's a rhetorical statement." He rotated his shoulders, settling the regimental jacket into place. "It fits."
    "Like it was made for you." She tugged at the cuffs, settling them over his wrist bones. "The odds of finding a uniform large enough for a man your size are a million to one.
    For a second he thought he heard Sara Jane's laughter but that, like this whole strange day, was impossible too.
    Emilie tilted her head and looked at him curiously. "Did you hear something?"
    He shook his head.
    "I'm sure I heard someone laughing." Her brow furrowed and she looked at him even more closely. "I need you to try on the breeches."
    "I don't do tights." He yanked off the coat and handed it to her.
    "They're not tights," she said, a grin tugging at her lush and beautiful mouth. "Spandex is a modern invention."
    "They're tights and I don't give a damn if George Washington wore them. I don't."
    "You'd probably look great in them."
    "Forget it."
    "Okay," she said. "You win. I'll wrap the uniform back up and you can be on your way."
    "Why don't you keep the uniform," he said. "It's not like I'll have a lot of use for it in Bora Bora."
    "I thought you were going to Tahiti."
    "First Tahiti, then Bora Bora."
    "I can't keep this," she said. "It's a piece of your family history."
    "History means nothing to me," he said bluntly.
    "If it doesn't matter to you," Emilie shot back, "why did you come here?"
    "I needed to know if this was real or a fake. Only a schmuck donates a knock-off to the Smithsonian."
    Her jaw dropped open.