Waiting for Your Love (Echoes of the Heart) Read Online Free

the recent men in her life—Travis especially, who’d been a lifelong friend—wasn’t going to warm her up to the idea of opening up to Conrad about what the heck had been bugging her.
    He gazed down at the woman who, even muddy, was entirely too adorable for his peace of mind. He didn’t have the heart to shake her until she was awake enough for him to steer inside. He kissed the top of her head instead, his lips lingering on the blond curls flowing around her perfect features like cool, living silk.
    Unaware of what he was doing until it was too late—at least, that was the story he’d tell himself in the morning—he deposited a second kiss on the plump curve of her upper lip, a third at the corner of her mouth, and a final offering on her cheek. She inched closer, free and open in her sleep, her lips branding his neck with the softness of a butterfly’s wings.
    “It’s a good thing we have an understanding, beautiful girl,” he whispered. “Or I’d have fallen for you years ago.”
    Friends forever , they’d promised each other when they were little older than Harper. No matter what. And ever since he’d returned to town after his wife’s death, romantic entanglements had been the last thing Clair had wanted in her life. Or so she kept insisting.
    She settled more fully against his chest now, practically in his lap. And he let her. Leaning back, looking up through the Jeep’s open sunroof, he stared at the still-cloudy night.
    He was a pragmatist, the later-in-life son of a retired Marine coronel, an ex–Special Forces hero who’d lived hard and hadn’t made it to Conrad’s second birthday. For years afterward, Conrad had dreamed of being just like the father he couldn’t remember.
    He’d read every book on the military and watched every documentary he could find, determined to become the kind of warrior his dad would have been proud of. And maybe he had, even after medicine became his passion. Now his early study of combat tactics served other areas of his life—never more so than after he’d lost Amanda to a fast-moving cancer that had left her only a few short months after it was discovered.
    Steady as the mountain , Sun Tzu proclaimed in The Art of War .
    From boyhood onward, that’s what Conrad had taught himself to be: steady. He’d conquered insurmountable things over the years—like surviving his wife’s death and making a new life on the other side of it for their son. He’d stayed focused on what was real and important, and had navigated himself and those he cared about through whatever challenges stood between them and where they needed to be.
    Cuddling Clair closer, he’d never been more certain that his next test was figuring out whatever was going on between the two of them. Her hand settled trustingly over his heart. He covered it with his own. He closed his eyes as the warmth of her body soaked through his T-shirt. He told himself to ignore the riot of awareness scorching him from head to toe.
    When he felt himself dozing, he figured what harm would it do—catching a short nap before rousting the lot of them?
    “Tomorrow,” he measured out in a soft voice.
    Tomorrow was soon enough to push for answers. Maybe even to ask Clair if she’d felt the same alarming, exciting things he had, shifting their relationship into uncharted territory. He had no way of knowing until he asked her. And even then, she might continue to put him off and pretend everything was fine. But regardless of what she said, there was one thing he’d always make certain she knew.
    “I’ve got your back, my beautiful Clair Bear,” he promised as everything but her touch slipped away. “Nothing’s going to change that, ever.”

Clair was having one of her favorite dreams. The one she kept wishing as hard as she could wish that she would one day get all the way to the end of. So she could reach the best part.
    Conrad was telling her he’d always be there, that she was beautiful. He was falling in