Chapter 27
Twenty-Seven
Colter
Droplets of water clung to Swayze’s back, trailing down her spine in glistening paths as she stood at the vanity mirror, toweling her hair.
Tucking my own towel around my waist, I stepped behind her, sliding my hands around her waist and dropping my lips to the curve of her shoulder, tasting the clean warmth of her skin.
Her head automatically fell to one side, granting me access to the side of her neck, that sensitive spot just below her ear that I’d discovered made her breath catch.
“Mmm. That feels good,” she murmured, her voice husky.
I skimmed my hands up to cup her breasts, loving how her nipples pebbled at the slightest touch of my thumbs, loving even more the way her breathing changed, deepened. “I can think of lots more ways to make you feel good.” I punctuated each word with another kiss.
Those slumberous hazel eyes met mine in the mirror, desire warring with amusement in their depths. “Your dedication to the cause is much appreciated, but you just had me in the shower. You cannot possibly be ready for another round.”
I pressed my growing erection against her backside to prove otherwise, letting her feel exactly how ready I was.
She instinctively arched back against me with a whimper that shot straight through me. “God. Much as I want to say yes—and believe me, I really want to say yes—you’re going to have to feed me. Woman cannot live on orgasms alone, no matter how spectacular they are.”
I grinned against her neck, ridiculously pleased by the compliment, even as I acknowledged the wisdom of her words.
“We can raid your kitchen.” I could make do with anything.
Eggs. Granola bars. Hell, even a leftover jar of pickles would work if it meant keeping her here, in this bubble we’d created.
“There is nothing in what we can euphemistically call my kitchen,” she admitted with a rueful laugh. “I didn’t make it to the grocery yesterday before rehearsal. So unless you’ve got something at your place…”
I paused to consider, mentally inventorying my own sparse supplies. “Pretty sure I’m down to cereal and some questionable milk. Carbs are fuel, right?”
On a laugh, she tugged out of my hold, turning to face me with raised eyebrows. “Oh no. You kept me up most of the night in all the delightful ways. You’re going to have to do better than that. I need fuel, Colter. Real food. The kind that doesn’t come in a cardboard box.”
Accepting that sexy time was over for the moment—at least until I got some proper nutrition into her—I sighed dramatically. “Okay, okay. I’ve got shift in a couple hours anyway. We can grab breakfast at The Commissary.”
Swayze paused in combing out her wet hair, her hand stilling mid-stroke. “Your grandmother’s place?”
I couldn’t quite read the expression on her face—something between nervousness and calculation. “Yeah. Is that a problem?”
“Not for me,” she said carefully. “But are you sure you want to go out in public like this? Together, I mean. The morning after is kind of a statement.”
“You’re not some dirty little secret, Swayze.” The very idea bothered me more than I wanted to examine. “Everybody already saw you kiss me at Christmas, so I think it’s perfectly reasonable to go to breakfast with my girlfriend.”
The word slipped out before I could think better of it, but I didn’t want to take it back. It felt natural. Like something that had been true for longer than the handful of weeks we’d actually been together.
That eyebrow quirked up in the way I was coming to recognize as her tell when something surprised her. “Girlfriend, huh?”
“I mean, I’m not sleeping with anybody else.”
“Neither am I.”
We stared at each other for a long moment as the weight and promise of exclusivity hung in the steam-warmed air between us. As define-the-relationship talks went, this was pretty painless. No drama, no games, just two adults being honest about what they wanted. I’d take the win.
“I’m gonna run next door to change,” I said, breaking the moment before it could get too heavy. “How fast can you be ready to leave?”
“I just need to blast my hair dry. Give me fifteen?”
I mentally allotted twenty, knowing from my sister and my experience with past relationships that fifteen somehow always turned into thirty.
But Swayze surprised me again, meeting me downstairs at her place dressed in dark jeans and a soft sweater, with dry hair and just a swipe of mascara that somehow made those hazel eyes even more striking.
As a guy who’d been trained to roll out in sixty seconds if necessary, I appreciated that she wasn’t one of those women who needed an hour and a full face of makeup just to go get pancakes.
“You want to take your car?” I asked as we stepped out into the crisp morning air.
“I can ride with you and walk back. It’s not that far.”
We headed out to my truck, and I opened the passenger door for her. On the drive into town, I laced my fingers with hers across the console, just enjoying the easy intimacy of being allowed to touch her. “That’s something I’ve noticed you do a lot. Walking to town.”
Swayze shrugged, her thumb tracing absent patterns on the back of my hand.
“A lot of the places I’ve lived over the last several years were overseas, where that’s a lot more common.
Public transportation, walkable cities—it’s just how life works in most of the world.
It’s something I miss when I come back to the States, where everything requires a car.
So since I’m only a mile from downtown, I take advantage of it when I can. ”
I considered that as I turned onto Main Street and found a parking space a block down from The Commissary.
It was another reminder that her life had been wildly different from mine—all those years of travel and adventure while I’d stayed rooted here, building a life and raising my daughter in the same small town where I’d grown up. It was part of why she fascinated me.
We’d missed the prime-time hour of the breakfast crowd, but there were still plenty of patrons scattered at tables when we stepped inside, hand in hand.
I knew exactly what I was doing, bringing her here like this.
It was an efficient and guaranteed way to get the news out that Swayze Parish was my girl.
A little caveman of me? Probably. But it was also a means of shutting down all the well-intentioned older women in town with daughters and nieces and granddaughters they thought were just perfect for me.
“Colter! Swayze! Good mornin’, darlins’!” Grandma Elsie scooted out from behind the counter to hug us both, enveloping us in her signature scent of coffee and vanilla and home.
Swayze flashed a bright smile that made those little lines appear at the corners of her eyes. “Hey, Elsie. Good to see you.”
“Hey, Grandma. We came to grab breakfast before my shift.”
My grandmother took a long, pointed look at our joined hands, her sharp blue eyes missing nothing, and wisely swallowed whatever commentary she might’ve made.
I could practically see her filing it away for later.
Instead, she snagged a couple of menus from the hostess station.
“Come take a seat, you two. Big Wade will be happy to fix you right up.”
“Big Wade?” Swayze asked as we followed Grandma deeper into the restaurant.
“Big Wade Washington. Master of the kitchens here,” I explained. “He makes the best pancakes and biscuits in five counties. Possibly the whole state, but I’m trying not to be biased.”
“Ooo, pancakes sound awesome right about now.”
“Big Wade has you covered,” Grandma Elsie assured her. “Y’all want coffee?”
Swayze slid into a booth by the window. “Do you have tea?”
“Not quite as many varieties as the bakery, but we’ve got some. You like the black ones?”
“That’d be great. Thank you.”
I took the bench opposite her and didn’t even bother checking the menu. I’d been eating here since I was knee high to Big Wade himself, though he hadn’t been working at The Commissary quite that long. The menu was burned into my brain at this point.
Grandma Elsie came back with a small ceramic teapot in one hand and the coffeepot in the other.
She turned the mugs waiting on the table right side up.
She filled mine just high enough to leave room for cream, exactly the way I’d been drinking it since I was fifteen.
“You need a minute to look things over, or y’all know what you want? ”
“I’ll have the lumberjack special. Over easy with bacon.”
“What’s that?” Swayze asked.
“Short stack of pancakes, two strips of bacon or sausage patties, two eggs however you like ’em, and a bowl of grits,” Grandma Elsie recited. “Enough to fuel you through ’til lunch, especially if you’re pulling a double shift.”
“That sounds perfect. I’ll have the same, please.”
Grandma Elsie grinned, clearly approving of a woman with a healthy appetite. “Okay then. I’ll get that right in for you.”
As she walked away, I began to doctor my coffee, adding cream until it was the exact shade of tan I preferred. “Do you miss it? Being overseas?”
Swayze jiggled the tea bag in the pot. “Sometimes. I’ve gotten to see and do a lot of really cool stuff that most people never get to do.
But there’s been a lot I’ve enjoyed about being more or less back home that I wasn’t expecting.
” She reached out to dance her fingers over the back of my hand, that touch sending warmth up my arm.
“Oh, Swayze!”
We both looked up as Goldie Newman came over from the table where she’d been sitting with a couple of other women I recognized from around town.
“I just wanted to say those mockups you made for the shop’s new logo are amazing,” Goldie gushed. “We’re still debating which one to go with—you know how it is, everyone’s got an opinion—but I expect we’ll have a decision by the end of the week.”