Free Off Duty (Off #7) by Sawyer Bennett

eyes.
    “What are you
doing here?”
    “Surprise,”
she says with a grin.
    Too fucking much.
    I pull her back to
me and kiss her again, this time turning her and backing her right
into the side of the engine. Holly purrs into my mouth, and lust
shoots through me.
    Fuck, fuck, fuck.
    I pull away from her
quickly, because I cannot be going there with my mind or my cock. I’m
on duty, a fact that makes me hate my job right this very minute.
    Giving her a soft
kiss on her nose, I release her face and take her hands. “Baby…
what in the hell are you doing here? And why the hell didn’t
you tell me you were coming?”
    Her grin gets
bigger. “It would sort of defeat the purpose of a surprise,
right?”
    Deep, hot kissing is
out but hugging isn’t. My arms shoot around her waist, and I
pull her into me hard. Putting my face in her neck, I breathe out,
“God, I love you.”
    Holly’s body
jerks in surprise but immediately melts into me further. Her arms
grip me tighter… her voice is thick with emotion. “I
love you, too.”
    It’s the first
time we’ve said those exact words since we were eighteen years
old, and I realize the power of them is magnified immensely just by
sheer virtue of everything we’ve been through to get us to this
point in our lives.
    I don’t feel a
need, though, to make a big deal out of those words. They simply are
the truth. Something we’ve both known in our hearts.
    Instead, I pull back
from her and ask her one more time. “What are you doing here?
And how long can you stay?”
    “How about
forever?” she asks, her eyes shining bright.
    “What?”
I ask carefully, my breath caught in my chest. Afraid to hope.
    “I just had a
job interview at St. Joseph’s on Long Island that went
amazingly well. So amazing, in fact, that they offered it to me. I
start in three weeks.”
    My knees almost
buckle from the complete euphoria coursing through me. “Please
tell me you’re not kidding.”
    “I’m not
kidding,” she says as she leans back into me.
    “But how? How
did this happen so fast? We just talked yesterday, and you didn’t
say a word.”
    She’s quiet…
her hands rubbing my lower back. I can sense hesitation in her, so I
prompt her, “Holly?”
    “My father
helped me,” she says quietly.
    I pull back from
her, taking her by her elbows and leaning back to look at her.
“What?”
    “He pulled
some strings. Got me the interview. I just found out about it two
days ago. I didn’t tell you yesterday because I wanted to
surprise you with a visit, regardless of how the interview went.”
    “Your father
helped you,” I murmur in wonder. Clearing my throat, I ask, “He
just helped you out of the blue?”
    “No,”
she says with a wince. “I called my mom and asked her if he
would, and apparently, he did. I haven’t talked to him, but she
called me with the details and told me they wanted to meet with me
right away. I hopped a plane here this morning and just finished the
interview about an hour ago. They offered me the job on the spot.”
    Shaking my head, my
lips curve upward. “This is just unbelievable.”
    “I know,”
she says with an excited grin. “Three weeks and we can be
together again.”
    “We’ll
need to move out to Long Island. It will be easier on you to be
closer to the hospital. I can commute into Brooklyn.”
    “You want to
move in together?” she whispers, her eyes wide.
    “Yeah, don’t
you?”
    “Well…
yeah, but—”
    “Sam thinks
it’s a good idea, and so do I,” I tell her quickly.
    “Sam thinks
it’s a good idea?” she asks with a grin.
    “Yup, and I’m
expecting he’s going to demand we get a house with a fenced-in
yard so he can have a dog.”
    Holly laughs, wraps
her arms around me, and pulls me back down for a kiss. When she
releases my lips, she says, “I think we should get the kid a
dog for sure.”
    I kiss her again…
swiftly, because I hear the swinging door bang open and the voices of
a few of the guys coming