Page 113 of S.O.S. Billboard

“Wh…?” O’Shea snickered, looking partly confused, but also amused.

“I refuse to be disrupted one more time,” he stated, striding back to O’Shea’s bedside.

Her mouth quirked up.

“Oh?” she asked innocently. “Do you have something you want to say to me?”

Well crap.It was just like O’Shea to figure out what was on his tongue. Clearly, it was his three false starts that had given him away.

“Maybe,” he shrugged as he sat on the edge of her mattress, sending a hand out to stroke her cheek and staring deeply into her lovely eyes. But just to be cheeky, he wasn’t going to play by her rules. “The kitchen wants to know what you’d like for food in the morning. You didn’t return their menu.”

O’Shea slapped his arm, laughed, then winced. “Ouch! Don’t say funny things. Healing ribs, here,” she told him, but her smile remained as she answered his question. “How about…” She tapped her lip then regarded him sassily. “…scrambled eggs, with a side of the man I love.”

Billboard was thrown off his game for a moment. “You…love me?” he repeated.

“Of course I do, Billboard. And you were about to tell me the same thing. Right?”

His grin, when it came, felt as if it would split his face in two.

“Damn right I was,” he replied.

But his O’Shea wasn’t about to settle for that.

“Was what?” she asked cheekily.

Hell, yes.He’d do this right.

“Was going to tell you I love you more than anything in this world, O’Shea. I want to marry you, and spend the rest of my days loving you. I’ve never met a more wonderful, prickly woman in my life, and I can’t live without you.”

O’Shea flushed around all the bruising that was currently turning yellow and purple. She looked just like a rainbow. The prettiest rainbow he’d ever seen.

“Are you proposing, Billboard?” she asked softly.

“Not yet,” he said. “I’m just staking my claim; letting you know there’s not a woman for me, other than you. And when I propose,” he stated assuredly, “There’ll be no way you can mistake it.”

“I’ll wait, then,” she said, leaning forward and capturing his lips so gently with her damaged ones, he almost couldn’t feel it.

Billboard sighed, his eyes growing damp.

Another first; this feeling of complete peace.

“I’ll hold you to that,” he responded solemnly, all banter aside.

Because O’Shea was his everything.

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Two months later…

“Come on, come on,” Billboard urged as O’Shea sat on the floor patting Zoe and Cheeto. “Ethan and Rory think they’re going to have us stumped this time, and I want to prove them wrong,” he said.

O’Shea sighed, having a difficult time getting up from the two furballs head-butting her legs. Not because she was still hurting, but because she missed the little devils. When it had come time for her to cart her cats back to Billboard’s house, they’d refused.

Well, at leastZoehad refused. Cheeto, the tiny dickens, had simply gone along with what his bestie and mentor had decided. And there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that Zoe had made up her mind to stay with the Jakes’. Every time O’Shea had tried to entice the savvy feline into her carrier, she’d complained heartily and sashayed away.

Not that the pair weren’t happy to see O’Shea when she came for visits. They actually basked in her attention. But every time she suggested that they might want to come live with her again, they turned up their pretty pink noses and disappeared.

“Okay,” O’Shea finally agreed, getting up and brushing her fur-covered hands on her jeans. Her ankle was healed enough that she didn’t need Billboard’s help, but of course he was right their making sure she didn’t teeter, anyway. “I can see these babies have had enough. It’s time to get down to business.”

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