“Lay down and put your feet in my lap,” he told her.
“Why? I’d rather be snuggled up right next to you,” she argued.
“I give a wonderful foot massage.” He grinned.
She had heard of such things but had never had one, so she did what he asked. He removed her socks and began to rub her left foot.
“Sweet Jesus and all the angels in heaven!” she groaned. “I’ve sure enough been missing out on something amazing. You have six hours to stop that.”
“I’m leaving,” Kayla called out. “Will is pulling up in the driveway right now. See y’all later.”
“Be safe, and don’t do anything I wouldn’t do,” Teresa yelled.
“That gives me lots of freedom right there,” Kayla giggled, and then the door closed.
Freedom.
The word stuck in Noah’s mind. At one time, he wouldn’t have given up his freedom for a million dollars, but that day he gladly would’ve handed it to Teresa on a silver platter, along with a wedding band.
She’d told him that she’d never really commit to a man until she’d lived with him at least a year, and he didn’t want to rush her. If it were up to him, he’d propose to her on the spot and ask the preacher to marry them the very next day, but Noah was a patient man.
When he’d finished with both feet, Teresa shifted her position to sit in his lap. “I love moments like this, when it’s so quiet I can listen to your heartbeat,” she said softly. “It’s like hearing drums beckoning to me.”
“What do you think my heart is telling you right now?” Noah ran his hand down her bare arm.
“It’s sayin’, ‘Take me to bed or lose me forever, Noah Jackson,’” she said.
Noah could hardly believe what he’d heard. “Say that again.” He pushed her back a little so he could look into her eyes.
“I want more than kisses. I want to go to sleep in your arms and wake up with you beside me every morning, to have a relationship with you that goes all through this life and into eternity. That’s what I want for the long term, but tonight I want to know that when I go to sleep, you will be right there beside me and that we will open our eyes together when the alarm goes off tomorrow morning,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Everything that you just said.” He stood and scooped her up into his arms, carried her up the stairs, and stopped in the hallway. “Your room or mine?”
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she whispered.
He was still thinking he might be dreaming, but if he was, he hoped no one would wake him up for a long time. If he wasn’t walking in his sleep, then his patience had finally paid off. He stepped into his bedroom with Teresa in his arms and kicked the door shut with his heel.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Noah and Teresa had planned to go to the haunted house in Sulphur Springs on Halloween, but a storm came up that evening, both outside and inside the house. The wind blew like crazy, bringing sheets of cold rain with it. Terrified of the thunder and lightning, Queenie refused to go outside and made a nasty mess on the living room floor. Noah was furious with her for making a mess and banished her to her doghouse on the screened porch. Then he said he was doing the dog a favor by letting her stay on his porch (as he said) and this was how she repaid him.
Teresa cleaned up after the dog, but she damn sure didn’t like the way Noah had acted with Queenie. If they ever did have children, would he raise his voice to them when they had an accident?
“A pet is like a child. You train them. You don’t yell at them like that,” she said.
“It didn’t hurt me to get yelled at,” he argued.
“It did me.” She looked him right in the eye and didn’t blink. “Queenie is afraid of storms. They scared me when I was a little girl, too. If things got tough in the house, I could always hide out under the trailer porch, but if it was storming, even that was taken away from me.”
“Oh, grow up, Teresa, and stop living in the past,” he’d said before storming out of the room.
His tone sounded so much like something Luis might have said that she followed him into the hallway. “What’s wrong with you? This is a brand-new side