If something happened to her . . . he didn’t even want to think about it. He couldn’t fathom a life without her.
He didn’t want a life without her.
She parked next to his truck in the driveway. He got out and snagged both her bags from the back seat of her car.
“Come on.” He walked up the path to the steps and right up and through the front door. She closed it behind them. He stood in the opening to the living room and met Declan’s surprised eyes. “Liz is staying with me for a while,” he announced without any explanation. He’d like to turn that “for a while” into forever. Soon.
“What took you so long?” Declan turned to Liz. “Hey.”
“Hey,” she answered back with a shy smile.
They’d known each other a long time, but Tate got that Liz probably felt a bit out of sorts letting Declan know she planned to stay with Tate—in his room. It kind of made him feel like a teenager, sneaking and doing something that felt naughty, but damnit he was a grown man. He and Liz were adults. He had nothing to feel embarrassed about, and neither did she.
Tate glanced down at her and ignored Declan’s unabashed smirk. “Are you hungry?”
Liz shook her head.
“Maybe later.” He didn’t have much of an appetite after he heard about all that happened today. He hoped to help Liz forget her worries and that Clint made her believe he broke up with her. He couldn’t imagine how much that hurt her. “Come upstairs, we’ll put your stuff away.” And he’d find a way to make her smile again.
Declan wore a stupid grin and gave him a thumbs-up that made Tate roll his eyes.
The heavy bags weighed him down as he took the stairs to the second floor, but anticipation sent him up and into his room where he dropped the bags next to his dresser.
Liz closed the door and looked around the room. “It’s not like I remember.”
“I took the Def Leppard and AC/DC posters down a while back.”
“And the centerfold calendar.” Her smirk made him laugh.
“I grew up.”
“Naked girls are better in person,” she teased, reading his mind.
He still didn’t want to touch that with a ten-foot pole. They’d spent far too much time on what had come before they got together.
All he wanted to do now was show her that she was the only woman who mattered.
“I’ll need to make some room in the closet or something.” The four-drawer dresser by the closet was filled with his stuff, but he could clear a drawer for her. The two nightstands next to the bed offered little space, but she could plug in her phone and charge it. His clothes and jackets hung in the closet, but it wasn’t packed, so she had some space in there, no problem.
Liz watched him while he tried to get through this tension-filled moment.
“You sure you don’t want something to eat?” He wanted to put her at ease and help her relax.
She tossed her purse and keys on the dresser next to them.
Neither of them had glanced at the bed since they entered the room.
She didn’t seem nervous at all. “I don’t need anything but you, Tate.” She’d always known exactly what she wanted.
He wanted to grab her and hold on. But he hesitated because everything would be different. As ready as he felt for it . . . there was no going back.
When he didn’t make a move, she tilted her head and stared at him. “Do you want me to stay here?”
“Yes.”
“Have you thought about us here together?”
“It’s all I think about now.”
“You know how I feel about you, right?”
“The same way I feel about you.”
She didn’t take her eyes off him when she pulled her work T-shirt off over her head and that dark red hair cascaded down her shoulders, the tips of it brushing her creamy breasts encased in a white lace bra.
His mouth watered.
“Show me.” Her hands went to the button on her skin-tight jeans.
“Stop.”
One of her eyebrows shot up in question, but she froze.
“I want to do that.”
She held her hands out to her sides. “Have at it.”
Need made him want to rush, but something deeper tempered that drive. He stepped forward, cupped her face, stared down into her jade green eyes and just took in her beautiful face. Light brown freckles sprinkled across the bridge of her nose and across her pink-tinted cheeks. One cute little