Chris snickered. “Bite your tongue. It’s just… I worry about Watt sometimes, that’s all. He’s a good friend. He needs something that’shis. You know? Something besides a TV show.”
I grunted.
He laughed. “Is it weird that I’ve learned to enjoy your grunts now that I know how to interpret them?”
I rolled my eyes and grunted again.
“See, nowthatgrunt means ‘No you don’t, Chris, because I’m a flipping former Division agent who knows how to do theclick-clickthing with a gun, which means I’m deep and brooding and mysterious and not the sort of person whose gruntscanbe interpreted.’”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Whereas theothergrunt, the one about Watt, meant ‘Chris is doing his people thing again, and I don’t understand what he means because Watt has plenty that’s his. An orchard, a kid, a sister, a whole community who loves him. And he’d better keep his moony eyes off what’smine.’” Chris grinned up at me smugly. “How’d I do?”
I opened my mouth to protest, but… he’d nailed it, honestly.
I grunted a third time.
Chris pressed a kiss to my jaw and settled his head on my chest. “Yeah. I knew I nailed it even before you grunted,” he sighed happily. “The thing is, Watt does have all those things, but they’re not all his. They’re his right now, maybe. His to care for. But they aren’t his the same way I’m yours. They’re notforhim the way you are for me. I hope he finds what we have, that’s all.”
I frowned. “Wasn’t he dating someone recently?”
“You mean Kayla? Yeah, but there was no chemistry. Watt told her they were betteroff as friends.” Chris lifted his head to give me a severe look. “Which is the same way he sees me.”
I wrapped my arm around Chris’s neck and pulled him in for a long and decidedly passionate kiss before settling him against my chest once more.
I knew, of course, that Watt didn’t really have designs on Chris. I also knew that, even if he did, Chris wouldn’t be tempted in the slightest because he’d given one thousand percent of his heart into my keeping. I wasn’t actually jealous… because there was nothing to be jealous of.
But when you knew someone as well as Chris and I had come to know each other, when you loved someone and saw the truth of them as well as we did… it turned out that sometimes pretending was fun.
“So what I hear you saying is there’snogood reason Watt keeps putting his moony eyes on my husband,” I grumbled.
Chris laughed and shook his head, his fingers toying with the top edge of my Henley. “I’m not your husband anymore, remember?”
“Hmm.” I dug my hand into the pocket of my jeans and grabbed the ring I’d stashed there. A ring I’d been carrying around for months, waiting for the perfect moment, forgetting that every moment Chris and I were together was perfect.
“I think you mean notyet,” I said, sliding the ring onto his finger. And then, as he stared down at it in shock, I added in a whisper, “Marry me, Chris.”
When he looked up at me again, his big brown eyes positively glowed with happiness, so bright they outshone the fire, outshone the stars, and made every other damn thing in the world seem dull and unimportant in contrast.
He wrapped his arms around my neck. “Heck.Yes,” hewhispered. Then he pressed his lips to mine in a kiss that went on for a long, long time.
But when I finally picked him up and carried him to bed a little while later, the light in the house on the hill was still on.
