Free You're Still the One by Annabel Jacobs Page A

hers. She remembered the time they'd gone skinny-dipping at the university pool after hours. How their splashing and teasing had turned to stroking, their water slicked bodies sliding hotly against each other.
                  Her throat dried up. She wanted to touch him, and laced her fingers together against the urge.
                  "You're safe," he said wryly. "It's not like you haven't seen all of me before."
                  She turned, relieved to see that he had wrapped the towel low on his lips. His chest was fuller, more defined that it had been when they were lovers, but still sleek and devoid of hair. All the way to the towel hanging low on his hips.
                  "After I was discharged, I came back to Oklahoma, to be near my folks."
                  She remembered his parents as very loving, their family close. Rick was their only child, something she's wished for herself during some of Grace's more moronic moments. Vina and Dale Powell had been extremely accepting of her, but Katie wondered how they'd fee about her now. She hadn't seen them since rejecting Rick's marriage proposal, hadn't talked to them at all.
                  She had sensed no regret in Rick's voice that he could no longer fly fighter, but surely he felt it. He had dreamed of flying fighter jets his entire life. His whole college career had been planned around that. And to have to give it up? It had to be frustrating, at the very least.
                  I'm sorry," she said.
                  His head came up; those black eyes lasered into hers, "For what?"
                  "The night blindness."
                  "I dealt with it."
                  "Still, it couldn't have been easy."
                  "It wasn't. What do you want, Katie? To see a little blood?"
                  "No," she gasped, lifting her chin against the stab of hurt his words caused. "No."
                  "Sorry." He moved around the hot tub, stopped a few feet away from her. Close enough that she could feel the heat from his body pulse against hers. After a long look at her, he faced the night, studying the sky. "That wasn't fair."
                  "It's all right." Was this what they'd come to? She really thought she'd moved past the regret, the resentment. Evidently not. And neither had Rick. Or had he?
                  Her curiosity had driven her out here. Maybe she should just let things be and go back inside. She turned to go.
                  "You're right." His words stalled her movement. "It wasn't easy. At first I was pissed all the time. Felt sorry for myself for quite a while."
                  "Which was probably one reason you went after that missing child," she suggested quietly.
                  He looked at her, thoughtful, his Choctaw features noble and proud in the moonlight. "Probably."
                  A faint smile curved his lips, and Katie couldn't keep her gaze from moving down the corded column of his neck, the sleek breadth of his chest. Her gaze rose to his, and she realized he's seen her watching him. A flush heated her cheeks and she looked away.
                  "So you took up private investigations. Lucky for me."
                  He moved behind her, heat and shadow against her back as he edged around and walked slowly to the end of the pool. "Right. I like what I'm doing now. I'm good at it. It offers me the chance to help people, sometimes in desperate situations. And my night blindness doesn't hold me back. I can't fly jets for the Air Force, but I can still fly sometimes. And I have a job that matters."
                  "It does matter." She met his gaze across the few feet that separated them, wishing she understood this strange mix of regret and exhilaration. He still got to her,