Chapter 45
SUMMER
Ilooked across the table at him and I believed every single word he said.
That was either the most romantic thing that had ever happened to me or the most dangerous.
Probably both. I believed him when he said he was coming back.
And that little voice in the back of my head that was telling me he had too much responsibility to up and leave Texas was going to have to sit down.
I was not going to let that voice ruin what I knew was going to be an amazing night. Good food. Delicious wine. It was a good night. I picked up my fork and took another bite of pasta.
We finished dinner and left the heavy conversation for another time. He cleared the plates without being asked. I refilled our wine glasses. He changed the playlist to something very jazzy and bluesy. Sex music.
“Come on,” he said, when the dishes were in the sink. He held out his hand and grabbed the bottle off the table.
“Where are we going?”
“Outside.” He nodded toward the back of the house. “I’ve been meaning to use that hot tub since we got here and I haven’t once.”
I looked down at myself. “I’m not wearing a suit.”
He looked at me with that slow smile. “I know.”
I laughed and took his hand. The back deck was warm from the day’s sun, the boards still holding their heat under my bare feet. He had the hot tub cover off in under a minute and the jets running a few seconds after that. Steam curled up into the night air.
“It’s too hot for a hot tub,” I said.
“It’s perfect for a hot tub.”
He was already pulling his shirt over his head. He looked at me, daring me with that single look. I knew the hot tub was private. No one was going to be eavesdropping.
I laughed and reached for the hem of my dress.
I shimmied out of the new lingerie for the second time in an hour.
I dipped my toe in and hissed. It was hot.
But it felt good. I stepped in and sank down.
My body adjusted in about thirty seconds and then it was perfect, the jets working against my lower back in a way that made me close my eyes and groan with something close to religious gratitude.
“Good?” he asked, settling in across from me.
“Incredibly good.” I sank lower until the water hit my shoulders. “I take it back. This was an excellent idea.”
“I have them occasionally.”
I opened one eye. He was stretched out across from me, arms spread along the edge of the tub, completely at ease.
The steam was rising around us both. The lights from the house spilled out across the deck but didn’t quite reach us, which meant we were sitting in hot water in the dark.
I was already a little drunk on wine and significantly drunk on him.
I floated my feet across and nudged his thigh with my toes. He caught my foot without looking and held it in his lap.
“What’s your mother like?” I asked.
He looked up at the sky for a moment, thinking about it. “Tough,” he said finally. “In the best way. She has this way of looking at you when she’s disappointed that is genuinely worse than any punishment she ever handed out. You just feel it.”
“Sounds terrifying.”
“She’s the best person I know,” he said simply. “She and my dad both. They built something real. Not just the business. The family.” He looked at me. “That’s what I grew up watching. Two people who loved each other. Who chose each other every day.” He turned my foot slowly in his hands.
“Tell me about the ranch,” I said.
So he did. He told me about all about it. I could hear the love for his home and it scared me. How could he walk away from that? But then I thought about what it meant that he was willing to leave it. He was choosing to walk away from that world and toward this one.
“You love it there,” I said quietly.
“I do.”
“But you love it here too.”
He looked at me across the steam. “I love you here,” he said.
Those four words were everything. I looked at him across the steam rising between us and felt something settle inside me that had been restless for years.
I floated across the tub and he made room for me without being asked, his arm coming around my shoulders as I tucked myself against his side. I was going to stop bracing for impact and just let myself be here, in this moment.
He pressed his lips to my temple and left them there.
I closed my eyes and listened to the distant sound of the ocean.
We stayed in the water until our fingers pruned and the wine was gone.
I was so completely boneless that the walk back inside felt like I was floating.
He wrapped a towel around me. It felt so good to be taken care of.
We climbed the stairs together. His room was dark and cool.
He pulled back the covers. I slid in without asking if I was staying the night.
He slid in beside me. It was difficult for us to spend nights together.
Our relationship had been stolen moments.
I’d spent the night at his house a few times, but it felt like forever ago.
“I love you,” I said quietly into the dark.
His arms tightened around me. “I love you too.”
I smiled against his chest and felt myself falling. He was staying. I fell asleep with that thought wrapped around me like a second blanket.
I woke up to the smell of bacon. I lay still for a moment with my eyes closed, cataloguing the situation. Warm bed. Cool room. No children thundering down the hallway. Colt. I smiled before I was fully awake.
I sat up and looked around for my dress and immediately decided against it.
There was a T-shirt on the chair in the corner.
I crossed the room and pulled it over my head.
It hit me mid-thigh. I wasn’t sure if his brother was in the house.
I went into the bathroom and rinsed my mouth.
I smiled at my reflection in the mirror. I looked happy and satisfied.
I padded downstairs in my bare feet, following the bacon and the music and the smell of rich coffee.
Colt was standing at the stove with his back to me.
He’d pulled on shorts and nothing else. Damn that man.
Did he not understand him topless was a tease?
Yes, he did know and it was probably why he did it. His hair was still slightly disheveled.
There was a cast iron pan going on the front burner with bacon frying. He turned around before I said anything, like he sensed me there.
His eyes moved over me once, starting at my bare feet and working their way up to my face. He didn’t try to hide what he was thinking. His expression did the work for him. And the obvious erection.
“Morning,” I said.
He crossed the kitchen in four steps, took my face in both hands and kissed me.
When he pulled back he was smiling. “Morning.”
“You know how to use that espresso machine,” I asked.
“I do.”
“I think I might like an espresso.”
“I think I might like to rip that shirt off you,” he said.
I looked down at myself. “This old thing?”
“You’re going to get yourself into trouble, if you make a habit of walking around in my shirts.”
I grinned up at him. “I like a bit of trouble.”
He made a low sound in his throat. “Dammit.”
“Your brother around?”
He slowly shook his head. “Breakfast meeting.”
“Your brother seems to be gone a lot.”
He shrugged. “He’s a busy man.”
He moved back to the stove and I followed him, pulling out one of the barstools at the island and settling onto it.
I watched him work. The bacon was already done and resting on a paper towel.
He had eggs cracked into a bowl, a pan of hash browns going on the second burner, and what appeared to be pancake batter already mixed and waiting in a ceramic bowl on the counter.
I looked at all of it. Then I looked at him. I looked around to make sure there wasn’t anyone else in the house.
“Colt.”
“Mm?”
“How many people do you think you’re feeding?”
He glanced over his shoulder. “Two.”
“Two,” I repeated. I looked at the stove again. Both burners going. A third pan sitting on the back burner waiting its turn. “You’re making enough food for a small army.”
“I’m making breakfast.”
“There’s bacon and hash browns and eggs and is that pancake batter?”
“Yes. And toast. I’ve got some sliced strawberries, too,” he added.
I stared at him. “I feel like you’ve lost your mind.”
He laughed. “This is a normal breakfast.”
“For an army.”
“Back home, this is just what breakfast looks like.” He flipped the hash browns, not even looking at what he was doing.
“Sunday mornings on the ranch, my mom would have twice this out before seven. Biscuits, gravy, the whole thing. You ate before you went out to work and you ate enough to hold you until dinner.”
I rested my chin in my hand and watched him. “Can I help?”
“Nope. Sit your perfect little ass on that chair and let me work.”
He moved to the espresso machine and pushed a couple of buttons. I watched as it hissed and dripped into a cup. He set a small cup in front of me without interrupting the rhythm of what he was doing at the stove.
I sipped and moaned again.
“Good?” he asked.
“Dangerously good. You’re going to spoil me,” I said.
By the time he set the plates on the island I was genuinely overwhelmed.
Eggs, fluffy and perfectly done. A pile of golden hash browns.
Three strips of bacon each. Two pancakes stacked on a separate smaller plate beside the main one.
The toast already buttered. The fruit in a bowl between us.
A second cup of espresso appearing at my elbow without me asking.
“Colt, this is so much food,” I said.
“Eat.”
“I cannot eat all of this.”
He settled onto the stool beside me and picked up his fork with complete serenity. “Sure you can.”
“I’m a normal-sized human person. This is enough food for a man who’s been baling hay since sunrise.”
He chuckled. “Back home that’s exactly who I’d be making it for.” He cut into his eggs. “You’ll get used to it.”
I picked up my fork, deciding to start with the eggs because they smelled incredible and I was hungrier than I’d admitted. “I’m not sure I need to get used to it,” I said. “I’ll be enormous.”
“You’ll be fed,” he corrected. “There’s a difference.”
I took a bite of the eggs. They were perfect. Seasoned properly, cooked through but not rubbery. I took another bite before I’d finished the first.
“These are really good,” I said.
He glanced at me sideways. “Thank you.”
We ate in comfortable quiet for a few minutes.
The music he’d put on earlier had shifted to something easy and acoustic.
I managed more of the food than I expected to.
The pancakes were light and slightly sweet.
The hash browns were crispy on the outside the way they were supposed to be.
I ate two strips of bacon and thought about how much time in the water I was going to need to burn this meal off.
“I’m so full,” I groaned.
“We have to get you used to these big meals,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because when it’s time for you to come to the ranch, you need to be prepared.”
I stopped chewing. “What?”
“You have to come back to Texas with me when I go home to prepare for the move.”
I grinned. “Is that an invitation?”
“That’s a request. One that you can’t refuse.”
As if I would.