“Well….” There was no good way to decline the offer. Crap. “Of course, I’d be honoured if you’d consider me for a wait staff position.”
“This will be a good thing, dear. Give us a chance to get to know each other better, and if you both have jobs, it’s easier to get a mortgage.”
Olivia’s scalp prickled with new understanding. “We’re not in a hurry to buy a house,” she said tentatively, feeling out the other woman. Watching her carefully for any clue that she was on the right track.
Anne pulled her lips together tight and glanced around. They’d done their best to make the rental unit a little home. It didn’t look temporary. And until five minutes ago, Olivia had been quite proud of it. “You’re not happy here?”
“Here?” No way was she offering any new information.
“In Pine Harbour.” Her mother-in-law’s face settled into a mask. Clue-time was over, but Olivia had more information than she’d had before the day started, so that was something.
“Of course we’re happy here.” She leaned forward and smiled. “Rafe and I will probably be house-hunting in the spring. We’d love your help.”
— —
“You told her she could help us find a house?”
“It was a trap, what else could I say?” She buried her face in Rafe’s chest. He’d come to bed naked and instead of sex, he’d gotten an earful about his mother. Really, it was his own fault for moving Olivia to his hometown.
“I’m sorry she came over.”
She rolled away from him, stretching out on her back. “It’s okay. I need to build a better relationship with her. At some point she’ll be my kids’ grandmother. Can’t have her bad mouthing me behind my back.”
Even in the dark, she caught the feral grin caused by her words. “Kids?”
“Eventually.”
He slid his hand over her belly—her still flat, unmarked, youthful belly. That he wanted to fill with babies. A smile twisted at her lips as he teased his fingers around her navel, then dipped lower, under the waistband of her panties. “You’ll be so beautiful pregnant.”
This was a dangerous game to play, one that made her want to flush her pills down the toilet and take a leap of faith. But even though they were married, they were still just getting to know each other. They weren’t ready, no matter how hot this conversation made them both. It did, though, and she couldn’t resist playing. “You like that idea? Filling me up?”
He groaned and took her mouth, hard and fast, at the same time as he floated his fingers over her sex. She opened for him in every way, kissing him and lifting her hips, moaning as he found her soaking wet. She wound her arms around his neck and pulled their bodies together as he shoved her underwear down her legs. He took her hard and fast, neither of them needing any more foreplay than the whispered words and lingering image of conceiving a child together.
They surged as one, her legs riding high on his waist as he braced his arms on either side of her face. He held each thrust deep inside her, and she wondered how he knew just how perfect that felt. “Ohmygodohmygod,” she chanted as he rocked over that spot again and again, sending her rapidly in the direction of a screaming hot orgasm. “Come with me, Rafe. Come in me.”
He lost it at those three words, as he always did, and she exploded around him. He pistoned his hips against her bottom, his hands tangling in her hair as he joined her.
The crisp, curly hair on his legs slid roughly against the sweat-slicked backs of her thighs as she collapsed beneath him, her limbs heavy with satisfaction. “God, that was…intense.”
He mumbled something into her neck about a wash cloth, and she pushed him over, leaving a loving kiss on his arm as she scrambled out of bed and hopped to the bathroom. “You know condoms would be less messy, right?”
“But not nearly as hot.”
“The post-sex crab walk is anything but hot.”
“I offered to clean up,” he protested lamely.
She shut the door, did her business, then ran a clean washcloth under the hot water tap before sauntering back to bed. She handed it over and curled up into his side with a yawn. “You cleaning me up usually leads to a second round of sex.”
He kissed her brow. “You saved us from that awful fate?”
“Mmm-hmmm,” she mumbled, and he said something else with a low, rumbly laugh, but she didn’t hear it because sleep had already tugged its all-encompassing warmth over her head.
— —
It was never good when Liv came home from work and slammed the door. She’d been working for his mother for a couple of months and he’d come to understand a lot about how her day had gone from how she came home. She dumped her purse on one of the piles of moving boxes, kicked her boots on to the mat beside the door, and stomped into the kitchen.
“Long day?”
