50. Scarlett
SCARLETT
H ours later, Devlin and I were slow dancing in my backyard, the party still going strong around us. “Sorry about Granny Louisa’s sliding door,” I said.
“Excuse me. Did you just apologize?” Devlin asked feigning shock.
“I figured I’d start with one of the smaller things and work my way up.”
“Easing into it,” he teased.
“There’s a lot we’re gonna have to talk about, Dev. Half the town thinks my daddy did it. When news breaks about that sweater, nothing’s gonna be the same. The media will be breathing down our necks.” I needed him to know the risks. To understand them. And then still pick me.
“You know, it’s a good thing your boyfriend is an attorney. It’s even better that he’s been thinking about opening up his own practice in West Virginia.”
I gasped. “Are you serious? Won’t your parents hate your guts?”
“They are currently bitterly disappointed.”
“You already told them? ”
“Scarlett, I went back, but part of me never left here. You’re what I want. God help me, but Bootleg is what I want.”
“I need to show you something,” I announced.
“Is it under that dress?”
He wasn’t exactly excited when I pulled him away from my house and bed and headed for my truck instead. But I had one hell of an idea, and I didn’t want to lose it in a cloud of lust.
“It’s worth the wait. I promise.”
Devlin held my free hand as I floored it toward our destination. There was only one thing I wanted more than to get him naked and under me. And it was important.
I turned onto the bumping lane and stopped by the peeling For Sale sign. The fields stretched out, bright under the nearly full moon. The tree line whispered quietly in the light breeze that stirred up. I could just make out the sparkle of lake water beyond.
I patted the For Sale sign. “What do you say, Dev? Build a life with me here? You can open your practice or do something else. Teach yoga, sell nuts and bolts, keep my books. I’ve got some money saved, and I can do some of the work myself.
I’m thinking four bedrooms and one of those big soaker tubs in a window facing the lake. ”
I could feel him practically vibrating next to me, and I wasn’t sure if it was the physical need to strip me down and make me come or if it was the plan I was laying out.
“We can build a house, a life, a family. And someday, when the kids are being obnoxious, we’ll tell them how it all started right here on the tailgate of my truck.”
His mouth lifted. “Why Scarlett Bodine, are you proposing marriage?” he teased.
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Not yet. I promised Mama not ‘til thirty, and a Bodine doesn’t?—”
“Break promises,” Devlin filled in, reeling me into him .
“I want this with you, Dev. I want a big house and wild kids and bonfires.”
“I want to give you anything and everything you want,” he reminded me.
“Is that a yes?”
“Honey, that’s a hell yes.” He kissed me hard under the moon on the land we’d buy together. “Why are you wearing this, by the way?”
He’d pulled back and was studying my dress. “I was planning to impress you with my chameleon-like ability to blend in when I crashed your place in Annapolis. Because I came to my senses first.”
Devlin threw his head back and laughed. “Scarlett, honey, you couldn’t blend in if you were invisible. Please don’t ever try. I’d miss my beer-drinking, boot-wearing Bootleg girl.”
I grabbed him by the tie and yanked him down to me. “Yeah, just remember who said ‘I love you’ first.”