Page 43 of Loving Decker

“Me too.”

He rested his arm across her chair and kept on eating, but every now and then his fingers would brush against her neck or shoulder, sending bolts of awareness and delicious sensations through her. Her side-eye made him laugh, and then she joined in.

He was totally doing this on purpose. And he didn’t stop. He got more bold until a finger ran along her neckline and up into her hair, subtle, unseen, but making Faith crazy. A stream of happy shivers followed the track, and the hair on both her arms stood straight up.

“What do you think about that, Faith?” Maverick asked her something, about which she was totally clueless. The whole table looked in her direction. And Decker snorted.

She sat forward, not quite swatting him away, but dislodging his arm. As she looked from one person to another, her mind trying to grasp at what they could possibly be talking about, Decker came to her rescue.

“The zoning would be important to know, naturally.”

“Thanks, Deck. We know how you feel about this. Faith is the final Haws. She has our respect, the whole town’s respect, and it’s going to matter how she feels about all of it.”

Grateful to be given at least the context of the conversation, she put a hand on his knee and squeezed her thank-you. “I agree about zoning. I want to have as much say about how the land is used as I can until it’s no longer in my possession. I was thinking there is probably a lot we can do with our city ordinances and specific laws we could put in place now that would protect green space, park land, governance of how the land is used, the types of stores, signage, strip malls, liquor stores, big box types, all of it. I think even before any of us sell, we should put these things in place.”

The table erupted with excitement and agreement. Faith smiled. She sat back, her hand still on Decker’s knee. He had grown strangely still. Her smile grew, and she ran fingers down his kneecap.

His quick swallow empowered her. And she knew that revenge would be sweet. All through dessert she played with his knee, his lower thigh, massaging into his muscle as well as running fingers lightly over his cotton khaki pants. She stretched out her hand and squeezed once, hard, on both sides of his leg. He jumped and dropped his fork.

She snorted, covering her mouth and looking away.

“You okay there, Deck?” Dylan laughed, watching them both too closely.

Faith knew she was beet red, but there was nothing she could do about it.

Decker wiped his mouth. “Fine, why?” His challenging gaze made everyone laugh harder, but they dropped it, thankfully. And Mama Dawson didn’t say anything.

Faith breathed out in relief.

Decker leaned over, his mouth brushing her neck as he whispered. “You’re killing me, woman. This deserves a walk out to the barn.”

She turned to him, their faces close, too close, tantalizingly close, and nodded. “I’d say it was about time.”

His eyes caught on fire…with happiness? Desire? And that’s all it took. He stood. “Okay, let’s help clean up, shall we?”

Everyone stopped talking and looked up at him with varying degrees of surprise.

“Uh, Deck. We’re not done yet.” Dylan laughed. “You in a particular hurry?” He looked from Faith to his twin and back.

Decker sat back down. “No, we have all night. Sorry.”

They kept talking, and Faith couldn’t stop laughing.

She took pity on him and said, “What should we do this week?”

His fingers tapped the table, a certain nervous energy she found amusing. But he nodded. “How about we go dancing?”

She smiled. “That’s what I’m talking about. I need a good night out.”

“Excellent. We can get some dinner, go dancing. Watch the moon rise afterward?” He wiggled his eyebrows, and she shook her head but smiled.

Watching the moon rise was definitely code for a good make out around the Dawson family. And she might just be okay with that. He’d certainly driven her to complete distraction with one finger. But did she want to experience that? A kiss from this handsome man beside her would be the end of her resistance. All those years of keeping herself from desperately falling at his feet would be over in one quick moment of puddle-creating wonder. And she would be forever his whether he wanted to continue dating her or not. Was he in this for good? Her heart would be.

“How about we see if there’s even a moon out that night. And count me in for dancing.”

They at last cleaned up dinner, everyone lingering as long as possible, or at least that’s what it seemed like to Faith. Until finally, she and Decker were sitting on the back porch, gently swaying in their swing. She pulled a blanket up around her. “Everyone in the world should get to sit on a back porch like this once in their lives.”

“Yep. Everything seems to be okay when you’re sitting on the back porch.”

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