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

love with her; she just knew it. She was holding on to him. And he wasn’t treating her as if she were nuts.
    So she kissed his neck, then his mouth, and lost herself in the feel and taste and sound of him. He was the forever place where her heart could finally put down roots and flourish. Without worrying when it would end or turn into the empty, going-through-the-motions nothing that her parents’ marriage had become.
    She’d decided long ago to never give her heart to anyone except the perfect man for her. And she and Conrad had always been off-limits romantically. Even after he’d left for college, and losing his day-to-day friendship had shown her how much more she wanted with him.
    Friends forever was simply too important to mess with.
    At least that’s what she kept telling herself, everywhere but in her dreams.
    “You feel so good.” She couldn’t touch him enough. “Why do you feel so much better than any other guy?”
    “Because you can’t have me.” His hands framed her face. His gaze was intoxicating as he studied her with the honest intensity that was uniquely Conrad’s. “And since this can never be real, what the heck, right? What do we have to lose?”
    “Right.”
    In her dreams, they got to be everything she’d ever fantasized they could be. No fear. No chancing the very real likelihood that Conrad wasn’t interested in her romantically, and that things would never again be the same between them once she fessed up.
    In her dreams it was safe to simply make each other feel good…
    The kind of good she was determined to find in her real life, even if having it meant leaving Conrad and Chandlerville behind.
    His mouth hovered closer. “Y ou trust me, don’t you, Clair Bear?”
    “Of course I do.”
    “But do you trust me enough to take a shower?” His kiss slid down her neck, his teeth scraping, making her tingle here, there, and everywhere.
    “A…a shower?”
    “Before we go see Barbara, you should really clean up.”
    “W-what?” Why, why bring up her mother at a time like this?
    “We’ll be late for the barbecue,” he said. “We’ve got to get a move on.”
    “We?”
    “You either advance toward the enemy in an ambush, or you’re trapped in the kill zone. Trust me, Clair.”
    “I do trust you.” Even when he talked in Special Forces riddles. “But…”
    His breath panted over her arm. His tongue was sandpaper and softness, warm with a side of slobber. His nose kept bumping her armpit for attention. He was the sexiest man she’d ever known, even when he was licking her elbow. Even when he—
    Wait.
    Licking her elbow?
    Her dream suddenly smelled like wet dog and mud-soaked clothes. She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed and concentrated like a woman obsessed, on the feel of his solid arms and soft, firm lips. She soaked in all that dreamy, Conrad goodness that she was determined to have, just this once. Tonight of all nights, she wasn’t waking up until she was good and ready.
    She brushed her hands up his ridiculously muscled arms. She pressed her nails into the tensile strength of his chest. Parents of young children were supposed to let themselves go. ER doctors had heinous schedules that left them absolutely no time to stay in shape. But not her Conny.
    He was a hands-on single parent, working his butt off to one day become head of the ER at Chandler Memorial. And still, for two years running, he was the captain and MVP of Chandlerville’s Ultimate Frisbee team. There’d never been a more droolworthy good ol’ boy. Not for Clair.
    She crushed her lips to his. He swept her into an even deeper kiss.
    “You taste so good,” he praised.
    But tasting her shouldn’t be possible, she conceded, since he was still licking her elbow. And whining. And unlike any of her other Conrad dreams, he smelled like he needed a bath.
    She tried to breathe through her nose, but then she was suffocating. Seriously? Had he been rolling around in the mud or something?
    Wait a