Love Her or Lose Her (Hot & Hammered #2) - Tessa Bailey Page 0,43

laugh. “Where have you been hiding them?”

Her eyes widened. “In the trash.”

He choked trying to keep his amusement buried, but it didn’t work. Dominic’s laugh boomed in the forest, sending birds flying out of the trees.

“She’s going to find out,” Rosie said, battling her own smile. “I’m going to be sampling Le Squirt Bon Bon for the rest of my life.”

“What the hell is Le Squirt Bon Bon?”

“It’s the nastiest perfume on the planet and it only exists so Martha has a power move.” Rosie signaled him to stand up the tent and Dominic glanced down, realizing they were done stuffing it with poles. “What about you?” Looking kind of nervous, she rolled her lips inward. “Tell me something about your day.”

Dominic handed her the stakes for two of the tent corners and they went about securing the shelter in place. Something about his day? Probably not the best idea to inform Rosie of how much time he’d spent lately staring at her clothes in the closet or sniffing her girlie soaps in the bathroom. “I’ve been doing some work in the basement at night. When I can’t sleep.” They traded a fleeting look and he wanted to kiss the guilt out of her eyes, but words were more important right now. “Found my framed commendations from the marines. The few pictures I took while overseas.”

He raised his head to find Rosie looking at him.

“You should hang them up,” she said.

“No, I . . .” Dominic left the tent area and moved to the nearby ring of rocks, squatting down to arrange them closer together. “I thought about it once, but I figured our house is already so small. Maybe one day if we had more room or a bigger place, I’d hang them up. They’re not a big deal.”

“Yes, they are,” she breathed. “A bigger place. We haven’t talked about that in a while.”

Goddammit. Why had he brought up the house? Until now, it had been the silent secret between them, but with her innocent comment came a deceptive evasion—and he hated it. Lying to his wife was a sin, in his eyes. But when he opened his mouth to come clean, the truth only dug down deeper, further out of sight inside of him. “I’ve been thinking about it lately. Have you? Thought about a bigger place at all?”

She joined him at the stone circle, helping him move the rocks into a perfect ring. For the campfire their hippie therapist had requested, because that was normal. “I’ve thought of us moving to somewhere newer, with more space. Sure,” she rasped.

“Would you . . . like that?”

Rosie’s gaze flashed to meet his, danced away. “Maybe we should focus on the present right now and not the future, you know?” When Dominic made a grudging sound of agreement, she dusted her hands off on her jeans and stood, shifting in the crackle of forest-floor debris. “Um . . . what was the third thing? A hammock?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah.”

The tension remained between them as Dominic gathered wood for the campfire. When he returned, he helped Rosie hang the hammock between two trees. Despite the lurking strain in the air, working in tandem with Rosie felt natural . . . and long overdue. It had never been more obvious to Dominic that they’d been avoiding each other, except for their Tuesday-night sex marathons. Even the simple task of hanging the hammock felt intimate. In a way that wasn’t physical. Like they were working in a partnership. He absorbed the feeling like a sponge.

“Okay,” Rosie said, wiping her hands on her thighs. “What’s next?”

“He said something about hanging a wind chime,” Dominic responded drily. “Got to have those positive vibes, man.”

“He’s a free spirit.” Rosie wrinkled her nose at him. “I think it’s kind of sweet.”

“Come on, honey girl. You would have rolled your eyes so hard at him back in the day.”

She thought about that. “Probably. But I would have felt guilty about it afterward.”

Something tugged in his middle over the accuracy of that. “So what has . . . changed about you? That you’d no longer roll your eyes at a stoned hippie who decorates with stuffed animals?”

Rosie’s gaze traveled over him, as if she was startled that he’d asked something that deep. “Well, for one, last-ditch therapy was my idea and my pride is in the way of me admitting I went a little extreme.” They traded a knowing smile. “But I wouldn’t change the decision now. Lately