And Then Forever by Shirley Jump Page B

best—she walked away before things got any more complicated. “I’m sorry, but I have to get to work.”
    She started to walk away, when Kincaid caught her hand. She spun back into his chest, colliding with him, and just like that, the electricity that had always sparked between them erupted in her veins. It was as if just touching him flipped a switch inside her. Time had not eased that reaction. If anything, it was more powerful now than years ago.
    “Wait, Darcy.”
    Before she could say a word, he was kissing her again, and she was melting into him, and her hands were roaming over his back. A hot, crazy rush of desire roared through her, and she found herself letting out a little mew when his tongue darted into her mouth, and his touch tightened on her waist. She pressed against him, her hands going to the back of his neck, then that mop of dark hair. She could feel his hard chest against her softer one, feel the erection that said she wasn’t the only one swept up into this. She closed her eyes, and for a moment—one long, hot, sweet moment—just kissed Kincaid as if she was eighteen again and they were stealing away for a moment.
    Because damn it all, she still wanted him.
    There was a sound behind her, car tires on crushed shells, and Kincaid and Darcy broke apart at the same time. She could feel the flush in her face, hear the rapid patter of her breath. “That didn’t happen.”
    Okay, so maybe not the smartest thing she’d ever said. But maybe if she said it out loud, the both of them would believe it. Before Kincaid could say anything else, Darcy ducked into The Love Shack and pretended her mind was on her job, and not on the last man in the world she should ever get involved with again.

K incaid skirted around to the back of The Love Shack, trundling down the old wooden steps to the beach below. A family was picnicking a little ways down on the sand, two parents, two kids, and a beagle. They had a basket of food spread out on a plaid blanket, the parents snacking while the little boy and his younger sister worked on one last sandcastle. The dog circled around the kids, tail wagging, ready to join in at any moment. 
    It was the kind of scene that made a man like Kincaid, someone who’d had every single thing a person could want, long for a family like that. To have a do-over of his childhood. Living with his parents had been like an ongoing shopping spree, filled with gifts but not the kind of traditions that created the images of a Rockwell painting.
    He wasn’t foolish enough to think this family, or any other family he saw for a snippet of time, was living some happy fairy tale life. But it sure looked good from the outside, and for a moment, Kincaid wished he had a little of that.
    Of course, having a family would mean settling down. Actually dating someone and having a real relationship, rather than the fly-by one he’d ended with Leslie. Kincaid had only considered marriage once, and to one woman—
    Darcy Williams. That summer, he’d been head over heels, insanely, crazily in love, and he’d decided he was going to marry her before he went to college. He didn’t think through the consequences or the logistics. But then she had broken up with him before he could ask her to be his forever, and the dream Kincaid had died.
    Then why was he back for more? Why was he trying so damned hard to spend time with her, to kiss her, to resurrect something that was, as she’d said, in the past?
    Maybe he wanted answers. Maybe he wanted to know why a woman he dated seven years ago still lingered in his mind. Why every time he saw her, he felt nineteen again. If he spent some time with Darcy, he’d get her out of his system. Yeah, that was it. That was all it was.
    But if that was so, then why did that kiss linger in his mind, occupying his nights, becoming the starting scene in his fantasies? He still wanted her, damn it. Even more now than before.
    And he was older now, wiser, and the consequences that