The crowd cheers. I feel my face go scarlet.
Then he takes me in his arms, bends me back, and kisses me.
All at the same time he takes his cowboy hat off and blocks our kiss from thecrowd.
Blocking their view, giving us this one small private moment inside the enormous public one.
The bar loses its mind anyway.
“Hi baby,” he murmurs, his mouth still close to mine, the hat a wall between us and everyone else.
“Show-off,” I whisper, unable to stop my grin.
When we come back up his eyes are bright and his smile is dazzling.
He settles his cowboy hat onto my head.
The crowd is still going.
And then he’s pressing an enormous, gorgeous bouquet into my arms. Pink peonies and wildflowers and sprays of purple lupine, the same flower Jonah picked for me and Walker tucked into my hair.
The look in his eyes tells me he’s remembering too. That he chose these with that memory in his head.
This man planned all of this. Every single detail.
For me.
He bends low, his lips at my ear. “You're coming home with me, copperhead.”
Of course I am, I think.
It doesn’t even occur to me that home would be anywhere but with him.
Scurrying back to my seat, bouquet in my arms, I sink into the chair next to Cassidy and cover my burning face with both hands. Walker turns back to the mic, easy and unhurried, like he didn't just make an extremely public declaration in front of of hundreds of people, half of whom had their cell phones out recording it all.
He smiles at me before launching into the next song.
Cassidy grabs my arm. “Oh my God, Sadie,” she whisper-screams. “You didn’t tell me Walker Rhodes wasin lovewith you. Holy shit.”
“It's not like that,” I say, tilting back Walker’s cowboy hat.
She stares at me like the doctor she is, only now she’s checking to see if I’ve got a concussion.
My gaze snags on Tanner.
He's leaning back in his chair with his beer, watching us with those green Rhodes eyes. All of them have those extraordinary emerald eyes. There’s a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth.
“Hate to break it to you, Sadie,” he says, “but my brother just kissed you in front of the whole world and put his hat on your head. I’d start lifting weights if I were you.”
“Why?”
He looks at me over his beer with serene confidence. “So you can lift the giant rock he's gonna put on your finger.”
Chapter 34
Love Song
WALKER
