Page 118 of Swept for Forever
He added, “Tell her I fed you. And that I’m mostly house-trained.”
I turned, my hands on my hips. “PG, Dom. PG. My mom still thinks I’m a saint.”
“Not with the way you begged last night.”
Before I could fire off a comeback, he had me airborne. He swung me, then dropped me onto the rug he’d just laid down.
Then he tickled me. Full-on no-mercy tickling.
“Dom!”
I twisted and kicked and tried to breathe through the laughter, but he just grinned wider, pinning me with those unfair lawyer arms until I was a giggling heap.
When he finally let up, he pressed a kiss to my cheek and stood.
“Call your mom, angel,” he said, and smacked my ass on the way out.
I padded back toward the coffee table where I’d left my purse.
Mom and I did the usual check-in—how are you, how’s the weather, how’s the bakery. Then I asked about Lulu.
“The little panda dog is okay,” she said. “She’s missing you. She keeps staring at the front door.”
“Oh, Lulu.” I pressed my hand to my chest.
“Hang on. Here she is.”
I heard Mom in the background, coaxing Lulu closer.
“Hey, Lu? How are ya?”
She barked, and I could just picture her ears perked, her tail going wild.
Then Mom came back on the line. “Oh, and that man…Buck. Where did he even come from? He looked like he came straight out of NCIS or something.”
“Mom, you’ve got to stop watching so much TV.”
But she wasn’t totally off. Dom had flown Buck in from L.A. He said Buck was the kind of guy you called when the stakes were life and death. Reliable didn’t begin to cover it.
The man might as well have been ex-NCIS. Dom had mentioned the military once. Maybe Mom’s TV instincts weren’t so far off after all.
“He’s a good man, your Dom. You hold on to that.”
I huffed a laugh. “Mom?—”
“No, listen. Men like that? They don’t just fall out of the sky. He’s smart, and he’s got your back. I bet women trip over themselves just hearing him say their name. Tell me I’m wrong.”
I glanced over at Dom in the kitchen, pulling gadgets out of cupboards. Suddenly, my assessment about him surviving on takeout felt wildly inaccurate.
“And,” she added, her tone loaded, “what was that little line about burning the world for you?”
I rolled my eyes. “Just a passcode. So you’d know the NCIS guy wasn’t there to kidnap you.”
“I beg to differ, honey. You know what they say about a man willing to torch the earth for a woman.”
“Mom,” I groaned. “One step at a time, okay?”
“You’re sacrificing a lot, love. The swimming, college… Just make sure it’s worth it.”
