I move to get out of bed. I’m definitely tender. “Fuck.”
“Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?”
I look up and find Travis standing at the door of my bedroom. He’s leaning up against the doorjamb, unfortunately he’s dressed again. He’s so pretty. All that dirty blonde hair, chocolate eyes, and those hands. My gaze travels down his body, pausing briefly at the bulge behind his zipper, then down to his feet. He’s got shoes on and I look up at his face again.
“Like what you see?” he asks.
“Yeah, I do. A lot. Also, if you knew me, you would know that I don’t kiss my mother.”
“Hmm, what about me?”
And just like that, my heart ticks up a beat. This man. Every moment I’m with him, I find myself falling even more in love with him.
“I would love to know what you’re thinking right now.”
His deep voice vibrates with humor but also a hint of a concern.
“Why don’t you get dressed and come on out here?”
“Why don’t you get naked and come back to bed?”
His mouth curves as his eyes heat. “Later. Right now, we need to eat. Put some clothes on and make sure you won’t be embarrassed if we get pulled over.”
“You’re taking me out to dinner? Like a date?”
Another twitch of his lips. “Something like that. Don’t dawdle.”
He leaves me alone and for a second, I stare at the space he just occupied. Is there a day that he won’t surprise me? I thought I knew everything about him, but little by little, things start coming out. I’m sure it’s the same for him. We’ve known each other for so long that we thought we knew it all.
News Alert: We did not.
I’m not complaining. Those little surprises, like the way he likes to sleep wrapped around me and the way his voice sounds when he groans my name, those things make me so happy. Especially since they are our own little secrets.
I can do this. Really. I slip out of bed and hurry to get dressed. The sun is about set and it’s cooled off a little, but this time of year it still hovers around eighty degrees even in the dead of night. No matter where we go, it’s going to be hot outside. I step into the bathroom and my eyes go wide. Jesus, I definitely look like I’ve been sexed up. My hair is a mess, my face is flushed, and, hmm, he left a hickey on my neck.
“Quit wasting time, Howard,” Travis calls out.
I smile at myself in the mirror, then start cleaning up and getting dressed. Ten minutes later, I walk into the kitchen. He’s leaning up against the counter and looking down at his phone. God, I love him. Every inch of him, including that aforementioned hands. They should be inducted into some kind of sex hall of fame.
He must sense me because he looks up from his phone. I watch happiness move over his face as he grins at me. I did that. I made him happy just by stepping into the kitchen. It pours off of him, vibrating in the air, reaching out to me. No one has ever made me feel this way, like I counted, like I was first in their thoughts. Okay, Syd did, but this is different. This man…he’s my everything.
Not for the first time, tears burn the backs of my eyes.
“What did I do?”
I shake my head. He steps forward and I take a step back and hold up my hands. If he touches me right now, I just might lose it. Of course, being Travis, he ignores me. I’m in his arms in half a second and he’s rocking me back and forth.
“Whatever I did, I’ll fix it.”
I sigh and hold myself together. “You smiled at me.”
He chuckles. His chest vibrates with the sound against my ear. “I’ll stop smiling at you, then.”
I pull back and look up at him. “No, don’t do that. Before everything that happened, we had been fighting for so long. You didn’t smile at me unless it was for the show, and seeing you do it now, just for me, it makes me feel so good.”
His eyes soften and right there, I feel my heart turn over once again. It’s becoming a regular occurrence these days.
“Me too.” He leans down and presses his mouth against mine, his tongue stealing into my mouth. I need him in a way that scares me, and normally I would be running. Instead, I’m slipping my hands up his chest, crowding his space…and I love it. Unfortunately, he pulls back. “Nope. We are going to take a break. I have something to show you, and I packed us a snack.”
He motions with his hand and I see the insulated bag on the table.
“What did you make?”
“That berry balsamic salad thing you like.”
“You made it?”
He nods. “You kept ordering it and…”
He stops talking and I wait for him to continue, but he doesn’t. He looks away from me as if embarrassed. Normally, I would leave him to it. Just ignore those tender spots, because I’m good at avoidance. It’s the only thing that keeps me from being pulled into my family’s drama. But after what we shared; I am not going to allow that with us anymore.
“What?”
He sighs. “You liked it, so I learned to make it.”
Of all the things I expected, that was not one of them. “You took the time to learn how to make something I liked to eat. Why are you acting weird about it?”
He finally looks at me. “No reason. I mean, I learned last year. I wanted to know everything you liked, and I wanted to give it to you.”
And he’s worried it would bother me?
“Did you stalk me? Like as in a creepy, peeping through my window kind of way?”
“No.”
“Did you break into my house and rifle through my panty drawer? Did you take your favorite pair?”
“God, no.”
“Then it isn’t creepy. Why would you think that?”
He sighs and looks away again. “You’ve always been out of my league.”
“That doesn’t make it creepy.” He still isn’t looking at me, so I tap his chest with both of my hands until he looks at me. “Travis, it is possibly one of the sweetest things anyone has done for me.”
His eyebrows climb up. “Yeah?”
I nod and rise up on my tiptoes and brush my mouth over his. “So, let’s go have this dinner you made for us.” As if to prove my point, my stomach growls. We both laugh.
“You got it.”
I back up giving him space, and he grabs the insulated bag. He follows me out of the house, setting the alarm, then locking the door.
“Where are we going?” I ask as he leads us to his truck. Mrs. Peterson waves at us and I wave back.
“We’re going to that piece of land I told you about.”
We talk about nothing important on our drive to wherever he’s taking me. He laughs about things that happened over the season, and we listen to my favorite singer Tim McGraw as Travis drives out of Juniper towards the natural springs. They’re a huge draw for tourists and one of my favorite things about our town. It’s weird to be in this almost desert landscape, which opens into an oasis. He doesn’t take the exit for them though. Instead, he goes to the next exit and I frown. I’m not sure where he’s taking me. He drives down a dirt path until we get to a real estate sign that has Sold on it. He still doesn’t explain as he slips out of the truck. I follow him out his door. Once he puts the tailgate down, he spreads out a blanket on it, then picks me up and sets me down—without asking. He joins me, then digs out our food. All the while my mind is trying to come up with the reason for this venture. He gets our salads ready, which he put in little takeout containers—no idea where he got those—and hands one to me and takes the other for himself.