He panted as he got behind the wheel again, and she handed him the roll. “Oh, sneaking a bite early, are we?”
“I’m a little hungry,” she said with a smile. Nerves bubbled in her stomach over showing him around her humble apartment, but the moment he leaned over and touched his lips to hers, all her worries melted away, the way cotton candy does with a single drop of water.
“I said we could eat here,” he murmured, kissing her again, and then again. He leaned his forehead against hers, and she breathed in with him.
“I want to show you my apartment,” she said. “I can wait.”
“All right.” He backed out of his garage and started the drive back to Coral Canyon. Joey relaxed in the heated seat and let the movement of the SUV and the gentle curves of the Apple Highway lure her to sleep.
She woke to the whip of cold air against her face, and Adam’s voice saying, “We’re here, baby doll.”
Her eyes opened, and the world came into focus, including her gorgeous boyfriend’s face. “I’m sorry,” shesaid, not sure where the food had gone. She’d been holding it in her lap when they’d left Adam’s house.
Adam smiled at her and backed up a step. He reached for Joey’s hand, and she took it easily. She rose from the SUV, the cold striking all of her exposed skin.
She tucked her scarf tighter under the collar of her coat and said, “So this is the sidewalk.”
Adam burst out laughing, and Joey giggled with him. She led him down the steps and into the apartment. She took a few steps inside and looked into the kitchen as Adam closed the door behind them.
He took a few steps and set the plastic bag with their barbecue on the table. “Let me get the bean bag.”
“Adam—”
“I just want to get the moving done, so we can relax.” He grinned at her and dashed out. Joey pulled out the Styrofoam containers with their food, and moved into the kitchen to get plates and utensils.
A pink wall moved through the door, and Adam groaned as he muscled the formless bean bag through the frame. He continued down the hall, and said, “Come tell me where to put this.”
Joey left the food and moved slowly behind him, grinning as he wrestled the bean bag through the doorway into her bedroom. “Right there in the corner,” she said, though Adam already knew where to put it.
He positioned the bean bag in the corner and stepped back to look at it. “Right there? Yeah?”
“It’s awesome.” Joey moved past him, kicked off herheels, and flopped onto the bean bag. She grinned up at Adam, who beamed at her with the wattage of the sun. Her heartbeat fluttered as she reached for him.
“Come see how it feels.”
“I thought you were going to show me the place.” He took a couple of steps toward her, which was all it took in a bedroom as small as hers. “I’m not going to?—”
Joey squealed as she lunged for him, grabbed one of his hands with both of hers, and pulled him onto the bean bag with her.
Adam’s breath huffed out of his mouth as he tumbled beside her, and then the bean bag held him up. Joey curled into his warmth as she slid her hands under his suit coat jacket.
“You should’ve gotten clothes to change into,” she murmured as she looked up at him.
“I’m making so many mistakes these days.” He grinned down at her, his cowboy hat crooked now.
Joey reached up and straightened it for him, her eyes then dropping to his, and then lowering to his mouth. “Welcome to my home,” she whispered just before she kissed him.
He kissed her back, gently pulling away a few moments later. “I love you, baby doll.”
Joey accepted that, letting the words—the feeling—bury deep into her heart. “I know you do,” she said, trailing her fingertips down the side of his face. “And I love you—I realized it yesterday when you weren’t here. I love how hard you work, and how you take care of everyone,and how you’re becoming this wonderful city-cowboy.”
She smiled at him as the love she held for him grew and multiplied and filled her from top to bottom. He slid his thumb along her bottom lip. “I love you, and I can’t wait to take you home to meet my momma, and to walk down the aisle with you, even if that’s not what men and women do when they get married.”
She giggled, and here, in this basement apartment with her secondhand furniture and her pink bean bag and the man she loved, a steady stream of belonging tingled through Joey—and she kissed Adam to remember this moment for the rest of her life.
CHAPTER
FORTY-FOUR
