One More Kiss (Affair Without End Book 2) by Susan Ward Page A

think I could do the next two months on the road without you. It’s been miserable from day one. My heart is just not in it, Linda. I’m going home for good, focusing on you and Chrissie, and just being happy.” He drops a kiss on my nose. “Do you think you might like having a stay at home beach bum in your life?”
    Oh fuck. Oh fuck. Oh fuck.
    I smile. Internally I am in chaos. Snippets of our pillow talk six weeks ago sound in my head with the percussion of a machine gun. I didn’t believe he was serious when he suggested I travel the final leg, the summer portion, of his tour with him. That he was done and he wanted me with him when it was officially over. The famous last words of all mega recording stars: last tour, done . They never mean it…and as for me traveling with him, I don’t recall what possessed me to say that I would, but I must have otherwise he wouldn’t think that I am.
    I stare up at him. Oh fuck.
    “How long will it take for you to get dressed?” he asks.
    “Not long.”
    “Then let’s get the hell out of this room. I’ve been landlocked for two months. Let’s just go walk on the beach, OK?”
    ~~~
    We whiz down the Santa Monica Freeway toward Zuma Beach. It’s sunny in the southland, hot even for June, and I’m starting to feel uncomfortably warm with the top down even though I’m wearing a baseball cap and a light t-shirt and shorts.
    The beach is going to be packed. Not that Jack will care. Not that Jack will even notice. A thousand people could stare at him simultaneously and it wouldn’t ruffle one hair on his head.  And even stranger, people stare, they notice, and no one ever bothers him. He roams every beach up and down the California Coast and I have yet to see someone approach him. I don’t know how he maintains this brilliant distance from the world, but within it he is at his most peaceful.
    I feel his eyes on me and I smile. He downshifts as we join the slower moving traffic on Pacific Coast Highway.  With each mile, the tension has eased out of Jack, and the sensation of soaring along road, open air, is strangely soothing.
    We were both tense beneath the surface when we left the hotel for this adventure. I know what’s on my mind, troubling me. My earlier dishonesty is as uncomfortable as it is despicable. I look at Jack. What’s bothering him? There is something. I can feel it.
    Everything along the coast is packed.
    “You do realize we’re never going to find a parking place,” I ask.
    Jack laughs. “Of course we will. We just need to be patient and then strike.”
    “Ah patience. My weak suit.”
    He gives me a salacious grin. “Ah patience. My strong suit.”
    I laugh. I hear in my head his husky voice in long ago memory: Patience, lovely Linda. We have all day. The remembrance warms my heart, but doesn’t fully calm my worries. We do have all day today and tomorrow, but then I go one direction and Jack goes another, and our roads are suddenly worlds apart. Will they ever cross over again?
    Wistfulness claims me.
    I frown. “Whose car is this?”
    Jack shakes his head. “I don’t know. Garrett arranges these things for me. It could be his for all I know.”
    “If you’ve got a roadie who drives a Carrera , I definitely feel I wasted my time going to college.”
    “Graduating USC is an enormous accomplishment. I’m so proud of you. You should have walked at graduation, Linda.”
    I crinkle my nose. “It seems kind of silly to celebrate the ending of something.”
    His fingers intertwine with mine and he touches them to his lips. “When you end something you start something new.”
    Tears unexpectedly burn my eyes. I look away.
    He turns into the beach parking lot. It’s packed. Not an empty spot in sight. I try not to gloat as we start that slow crawl hovering in wait for a departing vehicle ritual
    “Well this is a bust,” I say, after first trip up and down the parking lanes.
    “Oh, ye of little faith.”
    Jack’s eyes continue to rapidly