Lana jumped up as a timer went off inside. “Lunch will be ready in about halfan hour. I’ll just pop the quiche in the oven right now.”
Luke swiveled his head to look at Tessa. “Quiche?” he mouthed in feigned horror.
“Why don’t I show Luke around the property while we’re waiting for lunch,” Tessa said. “There’s a beautiful gazebo on the little hill over there.”
They held hands as they walked up the grassy slope to the redwood gazebo. The climbing roses that covered the structure gave off a sweet smell in the late-morning air. Tessa took a deep breath of scented air and looked around at the manicured gardens showcased by the perfect Southern California spring day.
“That was a nice thing to say to your father,” Luke said as they stepped into the gazebo. “What brought that on?”
“I don’t know. I guess I’ve realized that we both have made mistakes. And maybe it’s time to stop letting my life be ruled by the painful things that were done over twenty years ago. Maybe I’m finally just ready to move on, to be a real adult who takes responsibility for her own feelings and actions instead of blaming the past.”
“And maybe you’re just happy,” Luke said, and nudged her with his arm.
She laid her head on his shoulder. Expressing affection was getting easier each time she did it. “Maybe I am. I think I’ve got a good thing here.”
“In that case, would you mind very much allowing me to formalize this thing between us?” Luke asked. He took a small black velvet box out of his pocket and held it out to her.
Tessa couldn’t have been more horrified if he’d offered her a snake. The expression on her face said so, and it made Luke laugh out loud.
“The look on your face, Swiss. It can’t be a surprise that I love you.”
“You’ve been saying it for the last two days,” Tessa breathed, unable to lift her eyes away from the box he held.
“You said it first,” Luke pointed out. “I’m not letting you take it back now that the heat of the moment has faded.”
“I do love you,” she said mournfully. “But this is just so…”
“Cool? Wonderful? Unexpected? Scary?” Luke supplied.
She gulped.
“Look, I didn’t want to rush you, but I do want a couple of things here. One, I want you to wear my ring as a commitment to me—a commitment you’ve never made to anyone else.”
“That sounds kind of primitive.”
“You have no idea. Two, I want to have children while I’m still young enough to keep up with them. So sometime before I’m forty. That’s a couple of years from now, which should give you time to get used to the idea of marriage.”
“Marriage,” she repeated, before raising her blue-gray eyes to him. “I think we should slow the heck down and talk about this.”
“So talk. I’m listening. But you can’t tell me this is a surprise.”
“The idea of marrying you? I guess not. Not really,” she said, pleasing him with the knowledge that she’d considered their relationship in a serious light. “But not now, not yet. Remember the Plan?”
“Why wait another year or so? You know it’s right, and so do I. Will waiting a predetermined period of time make it more right?”
Tessa was beginning to feel slightly trapped. “I thought you understood how I felt and why. You’re the first person to really comprehend what makes me tick. You should realize that I might be feeling hesitant about…this.”
“I do understand, and I sympathize. But I won’t be an enabler.”
“What?”
“That’s what love is all about, baby. Understanding the pain and helping the person you love move beyond it—not be trapped by it. If I continued to dance around your fear of commitment, I’d be helping you stay trapped in the past.”
“Instead, you’re going to drag me somewhere I’m scared to go?” Tessa asked.
“You’re not scared. Not really. You’re just looking back and thinking that you’ve been hurt in the past. But I’ve never hurt you, and I never will.”
“I know you haven’t, but how can you be sure about the future?”
“You can’t. There’s no safety net in this situation, not with the way I feel about you. And the way I hope you feel about me.”
Tessa looked at him while her heart pounded with both fear and something else. Something good.
She should have known Luke would pull a stunt like this. Ever since they’d met he’d been carefully, persistently trying to pull her out of her self-constructed shell.
To be honest, it was one of the things she loved about him. The fact that he looked inside her, understood her, expected more from her—and got it. He’d been doing that in so many ways, both physically and emotionally, for the few weeks that she’d known him.
Why on earth had she thought he would stop?
“Do you understand, baby?” Luke asked. “Ours is not going to be some comfy weekend relationship. So just decide if you want to be with me, and we’ll hop in the car and go to Vegas.”
“Vegas?” She squeaked in surprise. “What happened to being engaged?”
“We will be engaged. All the way to Nevada,” Luke pointed out with a smile.
“Crazy in love, maybe. Crazy about the woman I want to have kids with, and build a home with, and get senile with.”
Tessa laughed and grabbed for Luke’s hand—the one holding the box.
“No one gets married after two weeks,” she said. “We’d be insane to try.”
“Here you go, quoting that invisible book of rules again. Who wrote that sucker, anyway? I want to beat the jerk up.”
“Shut up. You’re ruining my proposal,” she said. “Are you going to get down on your knee and finish this?”
In a heartbeat, Luke was on bent knee in front of her, holding her hand to his heart. “Will you be Mrs. Crazy in Love with Me?”
Looking at his gorgeous hazel eyes, Tessa caved in completely.
Sometimes, she figured, you just have to throw out the rule book.
“I will.” She leaned down and kissed him thoroughly. “But we’ll get to Vegas that much faster if we take a plane.”
About the Author
HEATHER LOWELL was born and raised in Southern California. She attended Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., where she began her love affair with foreign languages, international politics, and off-the-beaten-path travel. She’s journeyed by bus, train, and boat throughout the developing world, meeting local people and practicing her language skills-the occasional face-to-face encounter with livestock was an added bonus. While her “list of things to do before settling down” is still quite long, Heather has already crossed off hiking the Andes, going up the Amazon River, backpacking through Australia and New Zealand, SCUBA diving, bungee jumping, white-water rafting, caving, and jumping out of an airplane. In the 1990s, Heather studied in Brazil, volunteered as an English teacher in Hungary, and earned a Master’s degree in International Development. She briefly considered becoming a professional traveler before deciding that defaulting on her student loans wasn’t a lofty career goal. Instead, she served her time in a cubicle as a project manager in Information Technology, where her life closely paralleled that of the comic strip Dilbert. When the tech bubble burst and the stock market plummeted, Heather took it as a sign that she should get out of the corporate world and follow her dream of writing. She hasn’t looked back since that day. Despite an adventurous past, Heather Lowell now considers herself to be a dedicated homebody-with a car, mortgage, and dog to prove it. She currently lives in Arizona, where she is working on her next book.
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By Heather Lowell
NO ESCAPE
WHEN THE STORM BREAKS
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagina
tion or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
NO ESCAPE. Copyright © 2004 by Two of a Kind, Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub © Edition JULY 2004 ISBN: 9780061750908
First HarperTorch paperback printing: August 2004
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
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Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Epilogue
About the Author
Books by Heather Lowell
Copyright
About the Publisher