“No,” she said.“Not really.”
“Not at all,” he retorted.
He moved closer still and wrapped his hands around her upper arms to hold her a little bit closer.And if she really wanted to, she could put her hands out and put them on his body—
Matilda did want that, actually.So she did it.
And then the world tilted, because Tennessee smiled.
Despite her long-lived experience in not being chosen, which she had decided she would not let bother her when she was all of eighteen, even Matilda was perfectly capable of understanding that a man who had come here to order her to stay away from him would probably not smile down at her like that.
Like he’d finally discovered the sun and was sharing it with her.
Her own smile back was so wide it hurt.
“I knew the night you showed up with a puppy that you were going to be trouble,” Tennessee told her.“I didn’t want to let you in.I knew better.I knew you were a hurricane and you were going to knock the whole house down.”
“Good,” Matilda replied.“That was what I wanted.I was tired of waiting for you to notice me.”
“Oh, I noticed you,” he said, and muttered something that sounded a lot likedamn swimming hole.She told herself she was imagining things, and anyway, he pulled her a little closer and kept talking.“I told myself it was just that I hadn’t slept, that not sleeping was what made me feel so off-kilter, but then you showed up again the next night.My fate was sealed.”
“I’ve always wanted to be fate,” she murmured, her cheeks aching, and this time from that smile she couldn’t seem to stop.
His thumbs were moving, slowly brushing back and forth where he gripped her.It sent a kind of humming all throughout her body.
She thought that maybe, just maybe, it was joy.The kind of thing she associated with the pure, uncomplicated love of animals.
But this was a whole lot better.
This was Tennessee.
“I didn’t mean to come over here that night, and I certainly meant to leave before anything happened, but instead you kissed me,” he said.
Matilda shook her head a little as she gazed up at him.“I know.I was here.”
“But what I need you to understand is that when you kissed me, that was it for me,” Tennessee told her, and he didn’t sound stern or dark or grumpy.He sounded…sure.“This might come as a surprise to you, but I’m a man of decision.”
“In fact, this does not surprise me at all.”
“I don’t waffle around.When my mind is made up, that’s how it stays.”He was getting closer, and his hands were on her face, and she couldn’t think of anything she wanted more.“Matilda, surely you realize that I’m not thesneaking around under cover of nighttype.I thought that you were and I was trying to let you be you.”
That made her heart flip over in her chest.“Why would you do that?”she asked, feeling her eyes go soft.
“Because I’ve been in love with you the whole time,” he told her, forthright andcertainand he calledhera hurricane.“I not only love you back, I want forever.And I want everything that entails.Marriage.Babies.Grandkids.”
She felt that humming inside of her getting louder, growing in intensity, so much that it almost hurt—but it felt so good, so right.Matilda wouldn’t have minded if it exploded.
“Tennessee…” she whispered, hardly able to believe that this was actually happening.That he was saying these things.That he’d come to find her instead of letting her leave.
That he had his hands on her.That he was talking about forever.
“But first,” he said in that same marvelouslysurevoice of his, “I think maybe we should date a little bit.Just to see how we like it.Because I think we’ve been going at this backwards.”
Matilda looked up at him and wondered if maybe her heart really had burst.If maybe this was the aftermath, except it was far more sparkly than the flu of vulnerability.Because everything felt golden and beautiful, and she could see everything she felt reflected in his gaze.Love, admiration, attraction, and joy.
It was like a miracle.
All of this impossible joy filling her up, filling him up too, filling up this house and hell, maybe the whole of the valley besides.As if maybe even Montana’s great big sky wasn’t big enough to hold it in.
