She propped her chin on her hand and looked up at him. “You want the ugly story of growing up Kinsey Dalton?”
“I want to know everything about you.”
“Okay, well, my mom is out there in the world somewhere, maybe, probably high if she is still around,” she said, her tone light, no doubt in an effort to give the appearance that she wasn’t bothered. “She dropped us off with Meemaw, saying she was going into rehab, but we never saw or heard from her again. You were right about everyone in town knowing everyone else—that part is true.”
She worked her jaw back and forth before continuing. “Everyone in town knew who my mother was—and what she was—and that no one knew who my dad was or my brother’s or my sister’s, but we all look different enough that the smart money is on three different dads. That shouldn’t be a big deal and it shouldn’t matter, but in a small town where Main Street closed down on Sunday mornings for church services, it was.”
Judgmental assholes. He didn’t have quite enough money to buy a town just to evict everyone who was mean to Kinsey and her family, but he was fucking close.
“So people took one look at us and decided they knew exactly who we were and dismissed us,” Kinsey said, a tight quiver in her voice as she cut her gaze away and blinked several times. “Meemaw lost friends and her retirement nest egg keeping us fed and clothed. She cosigned my student loans using her land as collateral. She said she saw my potential and to hush up about worrying about paying it back. She believed in me. She was the same way with my brother and sister. She’s the best human being I know. That’s why I can’t mess up this job. That’s why this”—she dropped a kiss on his chest—“is complicated and why it needs to stay between us. It’s a huge opportunity, and if I mess it up, Meemaw could lose her house when I can’t make student loan payments.”
“You’ll do it.” He dropped a kiss on her forehead, never believing anything more in his life. There wasn’t a damn thing Kinsey couldn’t do. “Meemaw’s not wrong about you.”
“And I’m not wrong about you,” she said, that bright-enough-to-light-the-world smile of hers going full wattage. “Griff Beckett, you are amazing.”
She punctuated her declaration with a kiss that blasted away everything else and, as she lowered herself down on his cock minutes later, the only thing he could think was how much he loved this woman and how he’d do whatever it took to keep her close—only two dates to go be damned.
Chapter Forty
Griff
The next morning, Kinsey was still in his bed when Griff got out of the shower. And the one after that. And the one after that for three weeks while he waged an internal battle not to give in and tell her that he’d fallen in love with her the minute he’d heard her setting the world straight at his gym. Every time he’d almost given in, he’d remember Nash’s advice about showing instead of telling and Dixon’s warning about scaring her off. But there she was, sprawled out on his bed, somehow managing to take up two-thirds of it even though she was a third his size.
She sat up, the T-shirt of his she was wearing covering her up a little too well for his taste. Of course, judging by the way her gaze traveled over him as he stood there fresh from the shower with his hair damp and only a towel wrapped around his hips, she was feeling the same.
“Are you smiling?” Kinsey asked.
He tried to force his mouth into a straight line and failed. “I do do that.”
“Hmm.” She cocked her head to the side and gave him a considering look. “I’ve seen you snarl. I’ve seen the look you get right before we both end up naked. I’ve seen you go blank when you get knocked the fuck out.”
“It was one time. I was distracted.” By her.
She rolled up on the bed so she was on her knees surrounded by the rumpled sheets that always smelled like her now. “But I don’t get to see you smile that often.”
“You see all the smiles,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, almost all of them.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you flirting with other people?”
He stilled, her jealousy, even put on as it obviously was, making his dick twitch. “Come here.”
“Why?” She raised herself up on her knees and put her hands on her hips. “So you can pull up pics on your phone of all the gorgeous Beckett Cosmetics models and Insta influencers you work with?”
Like that was in his job description as head of R&D. As if he’d even noticed another woman since she’d walked into his life. She knew that. She was way too smart not to. He was ruined for anyone else but her.
He held up a finger. “One, you’re a pain in my butt.” He put up another finger and then pointed both of them at the ground. “Two, come here.”
“And if I don’t?” she asked, crossing her arms under her tits, the move pulling the T-shirt tight so that her hard nipples were more than a little apparent.
This was their game. The one they’d fallen into without ever really discussing it. She’d push his buttons. He’d let her—but only for so long—and then she’d be coming on his fingers or tongue or dick. Well, this morning was different. The Eiffel Tower had finally arrived. Usually his Lego room was off-limits, but like every other part of his life, Kinsey had changed things.
Towel wrapped around his hips, he strolled over to the bed as if the air in the room hadn’t just gone thick with anticipation. Kinsey watched him out of the corner of her eye, acting as if she was paying attention to the TikToks on her phone. No doubt, she expected him to drop the towel, get in the bed, and fuck her senseless. Oh, he’d do that, but not yet. Instead, he picked her up and tossed her over his shoulder before carrying her out of the bedroom and down the hall to his Lego room.
He hesitated outside the door, one palm on Kinsey’s ass and the other reaching for the handle. This wasn’t a place he brought people. Sure, Dixon and Nash had seen it, as had Morgan, but that was about it.
“You don’t have to show me if you don’t want to,” Kinsey said, her cheek resting against his back. “I know it’s special and I’m just…this is…well, it’s complicated.”
The thing was, he did want to. Letting out a little growl—the kind that he’d learned she loved—he gave her a soft smack on the ass to let her know what he thought of that idea and then opened the door. As he put her down on her feet, he tried to look at the room through her eyes.
It was a lot. Custom display shelves took up the walls, painted white and lined with the classic green Lego base sheet so the completed kits could be held securely. In the middle, under a light that looked like it belonged in a surgery theater, was his building table, made to be compatible with a man of his size. There were drawers of blocks underneath organized by color and type. The floor was a matte white, grout-free tile because nothing sucked more than looking for a block or a mini-figure sword that had gotten knocked off the table and having it mix in with the dark floor or, even worse, get lost in the carpet.