“What will you do if Terri does move again?” she asked, unscrewing the top from a bottle of cola and handing it to him.

“Fight her, I suppose.” He took the drink and rolled the bottle between his hands. “I can’t follow her across the country, but I need to be close to Dee Dee. I made a mistake letting Terri take her away from me in the first place. I should have demanded that she stay in state. We lived in Montana then. . . .” He frowned and took a long swallow. “Doesn’t matter. It’s all water under the bridge. It wasn’t my first mistake.” His eyes found Bliss’s. The back of her throat tightened, just as it always did when he looked at her so long and hard. “I’ve made a lot of them.”

She fumbled with her bottle, but finally twisted off the cap. “We all have.”

He leaned a shoulder against the post supporting the overhang of the porch. “My worst was losing you.”

“Wh-what?” Her head snapped up and she nearly dropped her soda.

“You heard me.” He smiled ruefully. “What do you think buying this place was all about?”

“I thought you wanted it to prove a point. With my dad. He fired you a long time ago, humiliated you, and you thought that by buying this place you could get back at him.”

“That’s part of it, I guess. But it wasn’t really his land I was after. It was his daughter.”

She froze, not certain she understood everything he was saying. “Look, what happened between us was a long time ago.”

“Was it?” He took a long swallow from his drink and she watched his throat work.

“Yes.”

“What about now?”

Oh, God. “Now?”

He set his drink on the porch rail, removed hers from her grip and placed her untouched bottle next to his. Then, standing only inches from her, he didn’t touch her, didn’t inch even the slightest bit closer, but said, “I want you, Bliss. As much as I ever have.”

There it was. Hanging in the air between them. A statement so direct and frightening that Bliss didn’t know what to say. She wanted to step away, to put some distance between herself and this man who knew just what to do to upset her world, but she didn’t, and she held her ground, staring up at him and wishing he would take her into his arms and kiss her as she’d never been kissed before.

“You didn’t,” she finally said. “You . . . you had your chance and you left me.”

“Wrong.” His gaze centered on her lips. “I always wanted you, Bliss,” he said, his voice so low it was barely a whisper. “I just didn’t know how to go about it.”

“You’re lying,” she accused, but saw the naked truth etched in his features, the pain of baring his soul.