Page 78 of Some Like It Hot

I’m smiling as I wander through the store waiting for her. Until I find something that I absolutely must have. Yes, she’ll be wearing it, but it will be for me. Okay, us. The guys. I’ll share. But she has to have this too.

I grab it and head for the dressing room. I knock softly. “Elise, this too.”

She cracks the door, peeking through. She sees what I’m holding and her eyebrows arch. “Oh, really?”

“I’m begging you,” I tell her honestly.

She reaches through and plucks the black garter belt and sheer stockings from my fingers. “Begging. I like the sound of that.”

She shuts the door again, and I lean back against the wall. “Let me know if you need help with a zipper or anything,” I say.

“Oh, I’m fine,” she tells me.

A couple of minutes later, she opens the door and comes back out. In what she was wearing before.

I straighten from the wall with a frown. “You’re not getting it?”

She gives me a smile. “I’m definitely getting it. And the stockings.”

“I don’t get to see you try it on?”

She shakes her head. “You’ll see it tonight. It’ll be a surprise.”

“You want to see me spontaneously combust the first time I see it?”

She grins. “Exactly.”

I fall just a little bit more in love with her.

“Brat.”

She laughs. “And I was wondering if you’ll take me somewhere that I’ve always wanted to go but have never been.”

“Over and over,” I say huskily.

She gives me that half-surprised-half-delighted smile again. “I mean an actual place, but that was a really good answer.”

“I’ll take you anywhere, El,” I tell her sincerely. If I need to sell my truck or start bartending on my days off to afford a trip, I’ll do it.

“So you’ll give me a tour of the fire house?”

I stare at her. That’s all? “You want to tour the firehouse?” I was definitely not expecting that.

“Of course. I’d love to see where you work. You spend so much time there and I know it’s really important to you. Your job isn’t just a job. It’s really something you have to believe in. I’d love to know more about it.” She looks around the shop. “You’ve taken an interest in my life.” Then she looks up at me again. “I want to know about yours, too. And that way I can imagine where you are when you’re not with us.”

It’s like she reached right into my chest and squeezed my heart like a sponge.

She thinks about me when we’re not together and she wants to see the place where I spend so much of my life.

And she used the word ‘us’ so easily.

“And,” she adds, giving me a flirtatious little grin. “Firefighters are extremely sexy in case you didn’t know.”

I move in closer, sliding one of my hands to her ass and giving it a little smack. “You have to behave if I do. I’m the only firefighter you have eyes for.”

“Well, I can’t promise that,” she says. “But I promise to only misbehave with you.”

I grin. “Good answer.”

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