Page 111 of Fix Me Up, Cowboy
I thread my fingers through hers, still not believing that she’s back in Copper Creek, afraid to let her go in case she disappears. I follow her upstairs to the attic.
She flicks on the light, gestures for me to continue up the stairs, and locks the door behind her.
My mouth curls up to one side. “You planning on kidnapping me?”
“Nope—just want to make sure no one interrupts us.”
I keep walking up the stairs and enter a room that’s nothing like the one I chased the bat from three months ago. Now the walls and slanted ceilings are white, with built-in, floor-level cupboards along the walls on both sides of the bed.
The queen-sized bed—with off-white bedding—is missing a headboard. Instead, the window is behind it and the floor-length, off-white curtains are currently closed.
She’s also added several potted ferns and a wicker laundry basket since I last saw the place.
“This is incredible.” It’s like our own private sanctuary. Something I appreciate with the party going on downstairs.
She smiles, an adorable blush coloring her cheeks. “Thank you.”
And then I sober. “Congratulations on selling the house. You must be relieved.” She said that she loves me, but that doesn’t really mean a whole lot…unless she’s expecting to have a long-distance relationship, which I’m not interested in doing. I want to be able to wake upeverymorning with her in my arms—and not just on alternating weekends or whenever she can get away from LA.
“I didn’t technically sell the house. I took it off the market. I’m moving here. This is now my home. Copper Creek is now my home.”
“But what about your new job with your uncle’s company? And in case you haven’t noticed, Copper Creek isn’t Beverly Hills.”
“You’re right. It isn’t. It’s so much better. The man I love lives here. I’ve got two horses that I missed. And I have some amazing friends here, too. Turns out, my friends back home weren’t really the friends I thought they were. It took the friends I made here for me to realize it.”
I gently kiss her, happy that she’s finally figured that out.
“But what about the job with your uncle? I thought you were excited about it.”Shut up, Noah.You don’t want her to return to Beverly Hills. You want her to stay here.
“I decided not to accept the position. Turns out, it wasn’t what I was expecting. Plus, my heart was still here. No job can make up for what I would have lost by not telling you how I feel about you.” She rests her hand over my heart.
At her touch, my already erratic heartbeat kicks up a notch.
“And because I decided to make Copper Creek my home,” she says, “a new opportunity came up. And this one I have no intention of turning down.”
“What opportunity?”
“Troy and I are going to start our own home-design and renovation company in the area. He’s incredibly talented, but his talents were going to waste with his father’s show.”
I gently press my lips to hers. “Christ, Kate. I love you so much. I never thought I’d get to say that to you again.”
And that’s as far as the talking goes.
Our mouths and our tongues and our hands go on to prove how right those words are. I don’t know how I survived the past two weeks—or maybe I didn’t. Because right now? I’m the poor sap who got lost in the desert and is now drinking the water he missed out on.
But not just any water.
The finest water around—the one no other could possibly live up to.
Now I get why Kate locked the door, because if someone were to come up, I’d have to push them out the window. Nothing is taking me away from her for the next thirty-or-so minutes.
My hands move to palm her breasts and I frown
I look down at the red dress. “How exactly am I supposed to cop a feel when you’re locked up tight?” I might be clueless about women’s clothing from centuries ago, but I do know this: men back then were screwed.
These days, some guys struggle with undoing bras. They fumble like a drunk football player trying to receive a pass. In the old days, no one stood a chance of getting a woman out of her clothing with a simple flick of the wrist.
Her breasts were hidden behind a fortress wall.
