He sighed as if it came from the depths of his soul. When he reached for her, she went easily into his arms. Rose laid her cheek against his chest and soaked in the comfort being in his arms offered. After a moment, he pressed a kiss on the top of her head and released her.
“I won’t be long.”
She caught the door when he opened it. “I’ll be fine. It’s wine, ice cream, and books,” she reassured him. “Those are some of my favorite things.”
“Okay, let me fix the lock so you can get in and out of here.” He took her hand, placed it on the scanner, and pushed some buttons. When the light flashed green, he nodded. “Now, you can open the door if you need to.”
“Thank you.” She felt so much better knowing she wasn’t trapped in the house anymore.
He gave her one of his trademark sexy winks and left. Determined not to make an idiot out of herself more than she already had in front of these women, she started to go back to the living room when a knock at the door stopped her. She placed her hand on the scanner, and when it flashed green, she opened the door.
“Hi.” Becky practically bounced past her into the house. “I brought the fairy lights, Chica.” She held up a sting of battery-powered lights. “Every blanket fort needs pretty lights.”
Rose’s eyes widened as Becky swept into the living room like a hurricane. Before Rose got there, the fairy lights were being pinned to the edges of the blanket fort with clothes pins someone had produced.
Becky crawled under the blankets, sat cross-legged on the floor with her back against the couch, and emptied her tote. “I’ve got Riley, Olivia, Kris, Susan, Caitlyn, Abbie, Maryann, Elizabella, Saffron…” For every author she named, she produced a book. “Each one a first in series. Your Caleb said you love to read; tell us what you need, sister.” She fanned the books out on the floor in front of her like a drug dealer with a new stash of heroin. “This is your ‘fix what’s wrong with the world,’ tent. You get to pick first.”
Was this what she’d been missing out on by not having female friends in her life? She didn’t know. But if it was, she’d definitely been missing out. “I’ll have Nightstalker, please.” She took the book, her eyes widening when she turned it over to the front cover. “How did you get the OG cover with the heroine on the front? I've been searching for years to find it. Years, I tell you.”
“I'm an OG Rebel, Girlfriend. I have every cover ever printed." Becky stroked her fingers over the covers of the books in front of her. “You couldn't pry this out of my cold, dead hands, not even if Tuck's life was on the line. But I’ll lend it to a fellow Rebel.”
“And you’ll watch to make sure I don’t dog ear it.”
“If you do,” Becky muttered, “you and me will have problems. Big, big problems.”
She nodded in agreement. “I promise I’ll look after it like it was my own.” A comfort read that she could almost recite in her sleep was just what she needed. “Let me check the freezer to see if Caleb has more ice cream.”
“Lina’s putting Jamie down for his nap,” Eedana said. “She can grab it. Your only job is to get swept away by the words and to get lost in a story where good men who sometimes have to do bad things figure out which way the sun shines when they figure out love always wins between the pages of a Riley Edwards classic.”
If only it worked that way in real life.
“He’s sleeping.” Lina placed a couple of tubs of ice cream on the floor in the center of their circle. “I swear if some jerk sets off the alarms and wakes him again, I’m going to cry at Dalton and insist he shoots whoever is responsible.”
That sounds a bit harsh.
“Jamie’s teething. We’re lucky if he sleeps a couple of hours at a time before either Dalton or I have to find the teething gel or contemplate running away from home to avoid the screams because it makes us nuts that we can’t take the pain for him.”
Rose inwardly groaned. She hadn’t meant for her face to supply the subtitles to what she was thinking. “Sorry, I didn’t mean?—”
“Girlfriend, I’m one of the least maternal people I know.” Lina jabbed a spoon into one of the ice cream tubs. “Even the week before I had Jamie, I’d have had that exact same look on my face. Now I’m wondering how I can teach myself to take good enough photos to use for a damn Christmas card.” All the women erupted in laughter as if Lina’s grousing was the funniest thing on the planet.
“When I get my camera back,” she’d started offering before she thought about it, “then I can take photos for you to use for your card.”
“I’m not really the Christmas card type.” Lina snorted. “But I would love some to send to Dalton’s mom. She’d lose her mind.”
“When I get my camera back, we’ll do some,” Rose promised.
“Hell, girl, I’ll have the business order one if you’d like to have one before the guys are done doing their thing with yours.” Lina searched through the books. “Love me some Callaghan Brothers. Thank you, Abbie Zanders.”
“I can’t let you do that.”
“It will belong to us.” Lina waved her off as if she knew what she was thinking. “But you can use it while you are here. You’ll have to tell me what to buy before I order it, though.”
Who were these people, and why were they being so dang nice to her? They didn’t know her from Adam, yet they were bending over backward not only to help her but to make her feel as comfortable as possible while they did it. “You’d do that for me?”
“It’s no big deal,” Becky jumped in. “She can sign it off as a business expense.”
“But won’t your husband be mad?”
