And dammit, there was that word again.
“Aww, he loves them,” she said, and rushed past him for the gate.Tripp stopped next to it and watched her run around the other side of the fence to take pictures of Rufus’s nose sticking through the biggest, lower circle, her giggles of delight making him grin.“Oh my God, worth every penny.”
“Nope, no pennies involved.”
She stopped, looked up at him over the top of the fence.“What?”
“It’s no charge.”
“No way.You did a job for me?—”
“I was happy to help.It took me all of what, forty minutes?And besides, you made me dinner.We’re even.”
She stood there looking like she was trying to come up with an argument.
“Just so we’re clear, there are no circumstances under which I would take any of your money.”
“All right,” she finally relented.“But I’m sending you home with extra muffins.”
He grinned.“I won’t say no to that.”
They left Rufus in the yard to enjoy his new lookouts.Tripp stood at the patio door at the back of the house, watching him do his recon.“He seems to like them.”
“I know, it’s adorable.”Willow was busy buttering the split muffins she’d just toasted.“All right, dessert—such as it is—is served.You gotta come eat them over here with me, though, because I just vacuumed.”
He joined her at the kitchen sink.They stood side by side eating the tender, crumbly muffins over it.He groaned as he swallowed the first buttery, slightly crunchy bite.“These are...amazing.”He’d caught himself from saying great just in time.
One side of her mouth pulled up in a knowing smirk.“Glad you like ’em.These are my go-to in the summer.There’s a blueberry bush in the corner of the yard, but the birds pretty much picked it clean before I got here.Next year, they’re all mine.”
He finished his muffin in a few bites, pausing to suck the melted butter from a fingertip.He caught her staring at his mouth.The kind of stare that sent heat spiraling through him.
They were standing so close he saw her pupils dilate.
Need pooled low in his gut.And when her big brown eyes lifted to his, it took an act of will not to slide his hand around the nape of her neck and draw her in for the kiss he’d been dreaming about since he was sixteen.
She stepped back before he could move and cleared her throat, busied herself wiping invisible crumbs from the countertop.“Want a quick tour of the rest of the house before you go?”
Not the most subtle way of telling him it was time to leave, but it was for the best.“Sure.”
It wasn’t a big place, but she’d moved her own furniture in, and with the new paint, it had a cozy, uncluttered feel.
“And this is my studio.”She flipped on the light and walked into a room painted a soft, cheery yellow.
Paint racks full of tubes and bottles of acrylics lined the far wall.A wide desk held an assortment of jars filled with various brushes, and a large canvas was waiting on an easel beside the desk.
“I was just finishing up putting a coat of varnish on the chairs when you got here.”
He turned to where the two Adirondacks were set on a painting cloth at the far side of the room to dry.His eyebrows went up.“Whoa.You did these?”
“With Bronwyn and Mae.They helped with the base coat and some of the details.”
“This is not what I expected when you said you’d been painting chairs.”
“What did you expect?”
“Plain red or blue or yellow or something.”Instead they were painted in a mix of moody blues and purples, looking like something out of a fairytale with whales breaching out of the water under the glow of a full moon shimmering across the water.
The slats of the backrest were close together enough that one had a humpback painted on it, dozens of water droplets sparkling as they dripped off its body.Whimsical flowers glowed in the foreground, framing the image.The other showed an orca and a sea otter in a bay, moonlight glistening on their wet bodies.
