Page 50 of The One

But she didn’t need others in her life to tell her that or point it out. She’d been doing a good job of getting herself there on her own.

It wasn’t until Rick though that she started to feel the true giddy happiness she had as a teen.

“Thank you for that,” she said. “I mean it. I think I needed to hear it without knowing that.”

“Glad I could help,” he said, leaning down to kiss her.

Looking at him, she wondered how she was so lucky to land such a hot successful guy.

He was tall and trim, had a nice five o’clock shadow going today, but he didn’t always. She liked him both ways she found.

He had a smile for her when he first saw her and it made her smile back at him.

Then to watch him interacting with his puppy? Yeah, talk about super sexy right there.

Add in a touch of gentleness like he’d just shown and she was positive she had the perfect guy and had to tell herself to not rush like her mother had put those words in her brain.

She was sick of having people do that to her and wished she could push them out but was struggling to find the courage within herself.

That was why when they were looking for furniture last week, she’d tried to keep her opinion to herself, but Rick wasn’t letting her. He’d wanted her input and she’d slowly started to offer it. He ended up buying the things she liked the best and she wasn’t sure why he did that.

The only thing she could say was he did tend to pick out a few things first and then ask her her favorite so it’s not like she found them for him. She felt like that was a good compromise.

They moved to another table that had Christmas decorations on it. “Look at these little firemen,” she said. “I’ve got to get one for Ben.”

She picked up the round globe that had a hand-painted little boy in an oversized fireman uniform as if he was trying on his father’s clothes.

“That’s cute,” he said. “You’ll never see a little boy trying on a developer’s clothing.”

She laughed. “You mean jeans and a T-shirt like you wear daily.”

“Life is good when you can wear what you want to work and be comfortable,” he said.

“It is,” she said. “I don’t mind dressing up. I’m not big into dresses and skirts. I like to dress up in them but not for work daily.”

“I think we should go out to dinner tonight,” he said. “We haven’t been out once to eat and I feel bad that we always cook. This is our fun day.”

“What about George?” she asked. “Can he be locked up that long?”

“He’ll be fine. It’s early yet so we can head back to my place and let him out and feed him if you want and then go to dinner. He sleeps all day anyway and never eats lunch, so he’s okay. He had his breakfast and did his business and I brought him to the park to tire him out before you came over.”

“Then he will want to nap all day anyway,” she said. “Hopefully he’s not keeping us up tonight.”

She’d wanted to spend the past few Fridays, but they’d gotten into the habit of her staying on Saturday. No reason to do two nights in a row in her mind. They weren’t there yet.

They did spend a night during the week at times and then most of the weekend together.

She realized now that he was right. They hadn’t gone out to dinner or done much other than hang out at his house and she was fine with that.

Which was funny because she wasn’t always fine with it before so why was she with Rick? Because it was new? Or because she just had so much fun being around him that she didn’t care what they did?

“I doubt it,” he said. “He requires a lot of sleep.” He waited while she paid for the ornament and then said, “I need Christmas decorations. Robin stopped over a few days ago and was so thrilled the house had more furniture in it and it got me thinking I’ve got nothing for Christmas.”

“Nothing at all?” she asked. “You’ve never decorated before?”

“Nope,” he said. “Nothing. Single guy here. I didn’t care about a tree or anything that went with it before.”

“Then why do you care now?” she asked. She was curious if he was doing it for her or not. She’d commented before that she’d decorated her apartment last weekend.

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