nearest Target so she could pick up some necessities.
I pulled into a parking spot. “Come on, let’s get you some things that you might need.”
“I can’t take your charity. You’ve already done too much,” she said, refusing to budge.
Surprise, surprise.
“I’m not leaving this store until you have the things you need.”
“Why are you so stubborn?” Exasperated, she stared across at me.
“Not the type to give up on what I want.”
The statement flooded the cab.
Underlying meaning blatant.
Couldn’t help it.
She finally tore her attention away from the severity of my gaze. “I will find a way to pay you back. I promise.”
Couldn’t help the smile.
Yeah. I was definitely not one to give up on what I wanted.
An hour later, we pulled into the driveway of my small house. Was probably about the same size as hers had been except on the opposite side of town. I killed the engine, and she just sat there, staring through the windshield.
“This isn’t right,” she whispered again. I could feel the rumble of her nerves.
Uncertainty and questions and unease.
Still holding onto the steering wheel, I swung my attention fully to her.
Gripping her with the want I could feel radiating from my stare. “I’m not sure I’ve ever done anything that felt so right.”
THREE
Tessa
WATER BOILED ON the stove, and I added the pasta to the pot while I glanced at the clock for what had to have been the thousandth time in the last ten minutes.
Three more minutes.
Nerves scattered, excitement slithering across my flesh and tickling my mind.
Oh man, I was getting carried away. Swept up. But it seemed impossible not to do with a man like Derrick invading my life the way that he had. Filling my spirit with his concerned, overprotective smiles and the unending sweet gestures that continually knocked the breath from my lungs.
Okay. Fine.
It didn’t hurt that he looked like he could be one of those firemen in the yearly calendars my grandmother used to keep hidden in her kitchen pantry.
God. The man was gorgeous. But he was so much more than a muscled body and a pretty face. He was too beautiful and too kind. Too generous and too right. My mind kept warning me that a man like him couldn’t be real.
Maybe I’d died in that fire after all and he was my afterlife. A gift I didn’t deserve.
Gigi and I had been here for the last three weeks. Held within the walls of his home that sang of safety and warmth.
I wanted to tap into it. Hold it for myself. Let it soothe away the fear that I couldn’t shake.
Worst of all? It was the attachment that kept coming on stronger, growing each day.
I should know better.
Apparently, I didn’t, because excitement went blazing when I heard a truck engine echo up the street. Headlights blazed through the living room window as he pulled into the drive.
Butterflies swarmed, and my blood burned hot at the thought of seeing him walk through the door after his 24-hour shift.
Missing him like crazy which was insanity itself.
Gigi’s ears perked up, and she trotted across the room, her nails clicking on the hardwood floor and tail wagging like crazy as she headed for the door.
She did circles on the rug and whined at the wood.
Anxious for him to return.
I understood the affliction.
“Don’t get too used to it, Gigi,” I mumbled under my breath. The warning was really for myself, considering I was just setting myself up to get my heart broken. I’d known it that night, when I’d come to consciousness and the first thing I’d seen were those concerned, dark eyes staring down at me—filled with something I felt all the way down to my soul.
Something indescribable.
As if the man had been written in the fabric of my being.
A thread that had been missing and now was perfectly sewn through the middle of me.
A key slipped into the lock, and my breaths were turning shallow, and I was doing my best to pull myself together but failing miserably when he stepped through the door and sent me this smile that left me nothing but a sticky, messy puddle.
God, he was beautiful. Full lips stretched in joy. Eyes dark and kind and taking me in like there was a possibility that he’d missed me as much as I’d missed him.
“You really are tryin’ to wreck me, aren’t you, Tessa?”
He scooped Gigi up into his arms where she’d been pawing at his leg.
“Wreck you?”
“It smells delicious in here.”
“Oh, um…well…it’s nothing. Just spaghetti. It’s the least I