they flipped—part of her wages is payment on it, and her mom did her right by it, Liv bein’ Liv. Cute little place.” He nodded, grinned. “She’s got a fire under her ass, shows up early, stays late, learns everything she can. Walks around with her own tool belt and hardhat. Three months, and she’s already Zane’s top employee, and he don’t favor her none.”
“Wow.” I was impressed, but not surprised. “Construction, huh?”
He nodded. “Yep. I figure she’ll have her own work in time. She’s got a real eye for remodels, takin’ what’s there and makin’ it better. Loves the work.” He clapped me on the back again. “Go. She’s missed you like hell.”
I got back in the truck and headed across town.
Her house was a little white ranch with a gray roof and red shutters, squared-off box shrubs under the bay windows, flowers along the little path to the front door, a detached garage and a small fenced-in backyard. Fuckin’ adorable.
I pulled into her driveway, and the trailer barely cleared the sidewalk.
By the time I had the engine turned off, she was out the front door and pulling my door open. The night was cool, early fall in Alaska, and she was out there in a T-shirt and not a damn thing else.
She didn’t say a word of hello, just climbed right into the truck and onto my lap, leaning back against the steering wheel, cupping my face in her hands and kissing me with all the words neither of us had.
I kissed her back with three months’ worth of loving her from thirty-five-hundred miles away.
She pulled away enough to meet eyes with me, her hands still on my face. “Say it, Rhys.”
I knew what she meant. “I love you, Torie.”
“Three months apart didn’t change that?”
“Three months apart made me realize I love you more than I even realized.”
She kissed me again, as if she couldn’t help it. She wriggled against me, and her breath was sweet and warm, her skin soft under the shirt where my hands roamed.
“I was so afraid it had all been a dream,” she whispered against my lips. “It was such a whirlwind of…of everythingness, and then you were gone and it was like it never happened, but I just had you in my heart and you wouldn’t get out, and I fucking—I dream about you every night, Rhys.”
“I’m sorry I never called. I wanted to so many times, but I just—”
She touched my mouth to shush me. “No. It was better that way. Easier to miss you and just sort of…try to forget while holding on to hope. If we had talked every day it would have been fucking awful missing you, wanting you, hearing your voice, feeling like you were close but not…” She shook her head, the loose pigtail braids shaking. “No. It was better how it was. I understood, and it was for the best.”
I just held her against me, her nose in my neck, my hands under her shirt exploring the curve and knobs of her back down to the swell of her hips and her thighs where they splayed to straddle me in the driver’s seat. I just inhaled her scent.
“Missed you so fucking much, Victoria.”
She shivered. “I like that.”
“I signed that letter RJ as a joke.”
“You’re Rhys, to me.”
“I told Lucas I was RJ when I was drunk, that night before I left. It’s gonna happen.”
“You’ll always be my Rhys,” she breathed. She pulled away, nose to nose with me. “Carry me inside and make love to me.”
My answer was to slide out of the truck and stand up with her latched around my waist, her T-shirt hiking up to expose her bare ass. She kept her nose in the side of my neck and her arms around my shoulders and her hands in my hair as I carried her inside. I found her bedroom, a small room with a king bed taking up most of the space, a small bureau, a closet with a tri-fold door and some clothes poking out on hangars. Three candles were lit on the bedside table. Six more on the bureau. Her bed was made, pillows plumped and neatly arranged, the quilt turned back. There was an en suite bathroom with a clawfoot bathtub visible through an arched entryway, with steaming water rising and more candles around the base of the tub and on the sink and the windowsill.
My breath caught. “Tor, what…?”
She wiggled, and I let her slide down to