Dream Girl
LILA
At around three o’clock in the afternoon, I get another text from Slade. It’s another photo. This time it’s Lucky in his bed, fully under the covers, only her nose visible.
Slade
What am I supposed to do with this dog?
I laugh and then text back:
Lila
Let her nap of course.
Slade
What if I wanted to take a nap too?
Lila
Now you have company.
Slade
This isn’t the kind of company I want in my bed.
Lila
No? What kind of company would you prefer?
Dots appear.
Disappear.
Appear again.
Disappear.
It makes me giggle to think of Slade typing and deleting a million things. I’m dying to know what each one is. I’m vaguely aware I’m standing in the middle of my boutique grinning at my phone like an idiot while Sarah pretends very hard to be busy arranging ceramic coffee mugs.
The dots appear one more time.
Then:
Slade
Come collect your dog.
You could just kick her out. Send her to her own bed.
Slade
No. Then she’ll be mad at me.
God, he’s adorable and he has no idea.
Sarah just looks up at me with a knowing smirk. “Dick pics?”
I goggle at her like some scandalized Victorian virgin. “What? No!”
I wish.
Sarah looks at me like someone who has watched me check my phone seventeen times today and is not buying whatever lie I’m trying to sell her.
“You’re leaving early, aren’t you?” she says.
“I have to take care of some things at home,” I say, grabbing my purse.
“If Slade Rhodes was texting me to come home,” Sarah says, “I’d have left an hour ago. The panties would be dropping before I made it through the front door.” She holds up both hands. “Respectfully. From an objective standpoint.”
As I push open the door to the brisk autumn air, I say, “We need to get you a boyfriend, Sarah.”
“I have one,” she calls out. “He vibrates.”
When I come in through the door the house is quiet except for Lucky’s snoring, which I can hear from the entryway.
I set my bag down next to the pumpkin bread, which Slade has made a healthy dent in already, and follow the sound.
His bedroom door is open. I stop in the doorway.
Slade is sleeping on the bed, still in his work clothes, one arm thrown over his eyes.
He’s pushed to the tiniest sliver of mattress on the very edge while Lucky sprawls across the majority of the bed with her head on his knee.
The late afternoon light comes through the floor to ceiling windows in big golden patches, falling across both of them warm and easy.
Slade must have laid down and been out before he could muster the energy to do anything else.
Poor baby. He must be wrung out and hurting. But he’s okay.
The knot that’s been sitting in my chest since 2:30 this morning quietly releases. I start to back away to let him have his much-needed rest.
His eyes open.
Vivid green and sleep-heavy, blinking against the afternoon light. There’s a crease on his cheek from his jacket collar and his hair is mussed and he looks younger somehow, softer, the way people do when sleep strips away their armor.
“She stole the whole bed,” he grumbles.
I press my lips together to keep the grin in and pad over to his side, sinking to my knees on the floor beside him so we’re eye level.
A lock of hair has fallen across his forehead, the way I now know it likes to do. I reach out and brush it back.
“She stole your bed because she loves you,” I tell him softly.
I pray he has no idea that I was just sleeping in his bed this morning too.
“Hm,” he says. His eyes haven’t left my face.
“The dog loves my bed,” he says, grumpy but his eyes still warm. “This is the last time I’m allowing it.”
“Of course,” I say earnestly.
Lucky snores.
“You can’t blame her though,” I say. “It is a very nice bed.”
“Thanks. My wife picked it.”
“She has very good taste.”
“The best.” He reaches out and takes my hand where it’s resting on the edge of the mattress, his thumb moving slow circles over the diamond. His green eyes are warm and slightly drowsy and fixed on my face. “Any idea why my sheets smell like flowers and marshmallow?”
I keep my expression completely neutral.
“I hugged Lucky,” I say. “My perfume must have rubbed off on her.”
“Mmhmm.” He doesn’t look convinced. He reaches up with his other hand, unhurried, and lifts a long strand of pink hair from his pillow. Holds it up between us.
“And this, sweetheart?”
Damn it.
I’m terrible liar and we both know it.
I look at the strand of pink hair dangling from his fingers.
I look at Lucky.
I look at the duvet cover.
“I may have snuck into your bed when you left,” I admit. “It was scary with the wind, and I was worried about you, and the house felt very big and very empty and I just…” I pick at a loose thread on the duvet. “I’m sorry. I should have asked.”
He’s quiet for a moment.
I risk a glance at him.
Slade doesn’t look annoyed. He doesn’t look amused either. He just looks at me with that deep, tender gaze on my face.
“Come here,” he says.
He moves over. Lucky protests with a groan but shuffles sideways. Slade lifts the duvet.
I hesitate for exactly one second, and then I climb in.
He pulls me in against his chest, his arm coming around me, and I feel him exhale slowly as I settle against him.
His chest is at my back, with him broad and solid and warm around me.
His arm slings across my waist, work jacket pushed up.
I trace my fingertips along the veins running along his forearm, the scarred knuckles of the hand resting against my stomach.
These hands that hold reins and hockey sticks and carry injured dogs.
That have been so careful with me from the beginning.
I turn my palm up and lace my fingers through his.
He’s so much bigger than me that I’m essentially enclosed by him, his body curving around mine, his legs behind mine, his chin over my hair.
“You don’t gotta hide it,” he says softly, lips brushing my ear. “You’re welcome in my bed. Anytime.”
My whole body goes warm. Then my mind reaches for the dirtiest possible implication in that invitation and the warmth intensifies a thousandfold.
The last time we were in this position, it was on our honeymoon. His hard cock pressing against my ass, hand cupping my breast. That low, rough “baby” murmured in my ear as he rolled his hips against me.
“Who were you thinking about?” I blurt.
“Hmm?”
“On our honeymoon. When we woke up like this… that is, when I woke up and you were still pretty much asleep.”
He’s gone very still behind me. “What was the question?”
“You called me baby,” I say, since apparently I’m committed to this now. “Which you’d never done before. And you said you weren’t thinking about me. So who were you thinking about?”
Silence.
I stare at the window and wait and feel his chest rise and fall against my back and wish I could take it back.
The afternoon light moves slowly across the floor.
Lucky snores between the gentle rise and fall of Slade’s chest against my back.
Outside the windows the meadow grass is still and gold and everything is very quiet.
I curse myself for ruining a really nice moment with my stupid, desperate question.
At last Slade says, “I never said I wasn’t thinking about you.”
I frown. “You did. You said ‘I wasn’t thinking about’ and then you trailed off.”
A warm exhale against my hair. “I wasn’t thinking about what I was doing, is what I was going to say. I thought I was dreaming. But that seemed like a bullshit excuse for waking up groping you. Good lord. Coulda fucking kicked myself.”
“You were mortified,” I smile.
“Still am,” he grumbles.
Running my thumb over the smooth platinum of his wedding ring, I say, “It’s really not a big deal. Some might even say waking up to being dry humped by your husband is a honeymoon rite of passage.”
He huffs out a laugh. “That’s one way to look at it.”
“I have a very healthy perspective on these things.”
“Clearly.”
Another small silence. Comfortable now, the embarrassment diffused.
But I still haven’t gotten my answer.
“So,” I say. “The girl in your dream.”
I stare at the ceiling and wait and wonder if he’s going to answer at all. If he’s going to deflect, or change the subject, or just go quiet the way he does when something gets too intimate.
Then he moves.
His hand presses gently into my shoulder, turning me, and I let him, rolling onto my back.
He shifts his weight, rising up onto his forearm above me, and suddenly we’re face to face in the gold afternoon light with Lucky snoring obliviously beside us and about six inches of space between my mouth and his.
He’s still in his work clothes, still rumpled from sleep. His dark hair is falling forward slightly. His green eyes are very steady and very dark and looking at me with an expression that makes it difficult to remember what I asked.
His hand comes up as he traces his fingertips along my cheekbone, those green eyes following everywhere he touches me. “It was you I was dreaming of,” he says tenderly. “Of course it was you. You’re my dream girl.”
And then his lips land on mine.