Page 251 of Sweet Temptation

“Morning,” I said.

They strolled by, oblivious to the fact that a couple of hardcore bikers had just rolled down their street.

Yeah. It was a fucked-up world.

And it was a beautiful world, too.

I took a breath of the crisp morning air and picked up Summer’s newspaper. Then I headed back into the house and locked the door.

Chapter Thirty-Three

Summer

Seven weeks later…

Snow was falling in fat, lazy flakes, drifting down around the car as Ronan steered us into the driveway. Usually, I found snow annoying. But right now it felt like I was living in the middle of the most beautiful, sparkling snow globe.

Maybe because I was so ridiculously in love with the man seated next to me that everything felt magical.

He was driving and I wasn’t complaining, so if that didn’t say it all, I didn’t know what did.

He used the remote to open the garage door and parked his Camaro alongside his bike. He’d taken me for many rides on that motorcycle now, before the snow came. And as it turned out, a ride on a motorcycle at Ronan’s back was fabulous foreplay.

The bike fit just perfectly in-between his car and mine; it was like the garage was made for the two of us.

We got out of the car. There were still stacks of boxes lining the garage wall, some of his things that we’d moved in but hadn’t yet unpacked. He’d given up his apartment at the beginning of the month and moved into my house, which meant we were officially shacked up together.

I was loving every minute of it.

I held the door while Ronan unloaded the shopping bags from the backseat and the trunk. It took three trips. We’d gone out Christmas shopping, then for dinner. And now we had just enough time to get ready for the party tonight.

It was four days until Christmas, and tomorrow we were taking the ferry over to Victoria to spend the holidays with my parents. Justice and Mia were coming, too. Ronan would be meeting my biological mom and my grandparents for the first time.

Maybe we’d play some Blackball.

And I was gonna looove watching my family shower Ronan with gifts.

The Sorensens were gift giving people.

Ronan, apparently, was not. He’d seemed a little… overwhelmed… by the level of my gift shopping extravagance.

He put the last of the shopping bags on the living room floor as I shrugged off my coat. “I can hear you frowning!” I sang from the coat closet. “Who frowns like that at gifts?”

He made a grumpy noise, which eerily reminded me of my dad.

I was gonna have to file that away for a future therapy session.

Then he muttered something about, “Who needs this many gifts?”

“Christmas is the season of giving, Ronan Sterling. I thought you were a giver.”

I plucked his jacket from him as he slipped it off, and hung it up for him. Then I looked at him standing there in our living room, surrounded by Christmas themed shopping bags… like grouchy Santa.

I went and flicked on the Christmas lights that had been strung up all around the room and on the tree. A number of our friends had been by this week to help decorate and drink spiked eggnog. Now it looked gorgeous and festive, and so cozy—especially with my handsome man in the middle of it, wearing the sweater I’d bought for him as an early holiday gift.

“If you’re gonna be this over-the-top about it,” he grouched, “why wouldn’t you at least do it in advance? It’s crowded in the stores.”

“So? I don’t mind crowds.”

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