Believe by Lauren Dane

Chapter One
    Two weeks. He’d been gone while attending a training in Dallas for two whole weeks and it had sucked. Being without him wasn’t something she was used to, or that she liked in any way.
    But to pass the time and to give him a Christmas present she knew he’d love, Rori had gone to a tattoo parlor with their friend Ryan and had her right shoulder done. Nothing too big or brash. A pretty, stylized melding of her initials and his, wrapped around an infinity symbol. She wanted to mark her commitment to him in a tangible way.
    He was due back tomorrow and she could hardly wait. She missed him in a way she couldn’t have understood without him being gone. Realized how much he did for her. The place he filled in her life and in her heart. In the time they’d lived together, before they were a couple and then in the months after, he’d become essential to her. He looked at her and made her feel like the most beautiful woman alive.
    As if by some sort of magic, he knew just what she needed and when she needed it. He was her other half. He made her laugh. Didn’t hog the covers, hefted the heavy stuff and didn’t balk if she asked him to pick up tampons at the grocery store. He saw straight to her heart and he loved her anyway. Having that connection with him was the finest thing in her life and something she figured she’d never be lucky enough to feel once Zach, her former husband, had been murdered nearly two years before.
    But she had him. He had her and she was, indeed, blessed.
    Again, she thought this was the case when she came around the corner on the last block to their house and saw him on the porch. Laughing, she double timed it, jogging toward him and pausing, just a moment, at the front walk to take a long look at what was hers.
    She took a good look from the tips of his scuffed cowboy boots, up the long legs covered in pale, worn denim, the bulge at his lap, the narrow waist with the tucked-in shirt and belt buckle. She caught her breath as her pulse galloped. She loved every tall, lean, muscled inch of his body. Her gaze moved again, up the chest she nibbled her way down as often as she could, the wide shoulders and work-strong arms and up into a face she’d dreamed of for years and years, never imagining she’d wake up to it every morning.
    Falling into his gaze.
    He leaned back against the porch, stretching out and preening just a little for her. The smile on his lips brought her nipples to attention.
    Jude Callahan in all his glory.
    The road that had brought them together—that had built this relationship she gave thanks for every single day—had been a hard one. Filled with pain and loss. And yet, there he was on their porch, with eyes only for her, with a smile that spoke of delicious secrets only she knew.
    “Now look what I got here. Come on up here, sugar, let me taste those lips.”
    As if she had anything else she’d rather do just then?
    She moved to him, up the steps and into his arms, and came home.
    His mouth on hers, as always, settled in for a taste. Exactly how he wanted. She sighed, opening to him, melting against him, glorying in his flavor, in the way his arms held her to his body.
    The heat of him forced the chill of the cold December day from her bones. When she shivered, it was for an entirely different reason than the cold.
    “Now then.” He set her away from him, his eyes going half-lidded when she licked her lips to get that last bit of him she could for the moment. “I feel lots better.”
    “Good. My work is done then.” Because she could, she took another tour from his toes to his gorgeous face. “You’re home! A whole day early. What are you doing out here? It’s cold. Did you lose your keys? Not that I mind, it sure made that last half block easier to see you waiting up here for me looking all handsome and stuff.”
    “I had the chance to catch an earlier flight so I grabbed it. The last day wasn’t anything I hadn’t done before so I got out of there