“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 oflooking 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 Iwas 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.