Bring Me Home for Christmas - By Robyn Carr Page 0,70
your own apartment. Are you going to let me move in with you? Will that freak out your parents?”
“Huh?”
“I could stay with Rich,” he said. “But really, Becca. I just don’t want to let you too far out of my sight. I scared myself good the last time we got too far apart. Will your parents get all upset about that? If we live together? Because it’s going to take a while to find a job down there. Don’t worry, I have some money saved that we can put toward rent, but—”
“Live with me?” she asked. “You’re staying?”
“Where would I go?” he asked, completely confused.
“I thought you were just going to drive me home and come back here!”
“What gave you an idea like that?”
“I don’t know. Because you said how much you loved it here, because you wanted me to try it, because…because you didn’t say you were moving! You said you would take me home for Christmas.”
He stared at her for a moment. “Listen, if you’re not ready to take this to the next level, if you need a little more time before we start planning a whole lifetime together, I can just ask Rich if I can have his couch. But seriously, the way we can’t seem to keep our hands off each other, I bet I end up staying over at your—”
A squeal of laughter erupted from her and she threw her arms around his neck. Then she planted a kiss on him that quickly melted into a deeper, more demanding kiss. Their heads tilted, mouths opened, tongues dueled. Denny moved to embrace her; his hands slipped under her pajamas to stroke her naked back.
When their kiss finally broke, she laughed.
“See what I mean?” he asked. “We might just as well share the rent, since there’s no question we’re going to share the bed.” She giggled.
“And this is funny, how?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I didn’t get it,” she said. “I thought asking to go home was something you were going to do for me. I thought… We’re going to have to work on our communication.”
“Well, I thought I might have to come back up here after Christmas for a few days to pack up and at least get Jillian on stable ground so she could manage without me. Those were a couple of the details I was trying to get organized in my head while you were finishing up your homework club, pageant practice and stuff. But when you get down to it, I don’t have that much to pack. And you came up here with one suitcase. Bottom line is, I can’t stand the idea of even spending a few days away from you if I don’t have to.”
“Good, because neither can I!”
“So here we are, two jobless people—ought to be interesting. I’ve saved money since living here—when you live in one furnished room and work two jobs, it’s not that hard. And there’s that money from the sale of my mom’s house when she died—that was going to go toward a house of my own. Now it will be a house of our own, but it might not come as fast, honey. With neither of us working yet and real estate so much more expensive in San Diego—”
“I don’t care,” she said. “I have a cute apartment. And I’ll get a job. I’ll do whatever I have to if I don’t get a teaching job. I have office experience, waitress experience—”
He stroked her pretty blond hair. “You should be with kids. I’ve seen you with them. There’s no question that’s were you belong.”
“I will be, but if it takes a while to find a teaching job, I’ll just work somewhere else while I’m looking.”
“You’re unbelievable, you know that?” he said. “I wondered why you weren’t all jazzed about going home. Crap, once again it was me—just because I didn’t say the right things!”
“Or I didn’t ask the right things,” she said. “I have to be honest, I was afraid to ask. I didn’t want to cry when you told me you just couldn’t come with me.”
“Listen, you’re first, Becca. I’m going to teach you to trust me again somehow. Right now, just remember you’re first. What you need is the top of the list. Always.” Then he laughed. “That Jack, sometimes the guy is brilliant, you know? I was telling him tonight that I was leaving—saying goodbye, really—and I told him that I had kind of liked the idea of growing a family