“I’ll have you know Southerners make barbeque an art form!” The only art form Lucky practiced. He dropped a dishtowel over the department store bag to hide the evidence and let out a deep breath.
Now wasn’t the right moment. Soon. Real soon.
Bo sidled up behind Lucky. “Anything I can do to help?”
Step away from me before I spring wood, haul you off to the bedroom, and say “Screw breakfast?”Lucky managed to keep the words from escaping his mouth. Practice made perfect, and he’d gotten a lot of practice lately in not blurting out the first thing to cross his mind. Kept things more peaceful at home.
“You can get the syrup out and set the table,” Lucky finally answered before he lost control and took Bo right on the kitchen floor—again. Good thing he’d put Moose in the back yard. Getting a cold nose on the backside while preoccupied with other things tended to make even the hardest cock wilt in shock.
“Sure.” Bo kissed the back of Lucky’s neck and ambled off, the slams of cabinet doors and rattle of silverware marking his progress.
Lucky flipped the last pancake onto a plate with the others, dumped a pack of stevia into Bo’s cup of tea, and hauled breakfast to the table.
Bo helped himself to a few pancakes and a modest pool of syrup. Lucky, on the other hand, liked a little pancake with his syrup.
Bo patted his middle. “You know we’ll have to run at least three miles to work these off, right?”
“I got better ways to burn calories.” And Lucky did too. Creative ways. Exhausting ways. Ways to leave them both in a sticky, sweaty, panting mess.
Lucky watched Bo eat and lick his lips clean of syrup, squirming in his chair to adjust his rising stiffie.
Bo moaned. “Oh, this is good. To what do I owe the honor of waking up to breakfast?”
“Hey! You act like it’s the first time I’ve ever gotten up early to fix you breakfast.”
One of Bo’s brows went upward, the other down. How did he do that?
He made a good point, even with only facial expressions. “Well, okay. So it doesn’t happen much. Do I have to have some special reason?”
Bo leaned back in his chair, folded his arms across his chest, and lifted his already gravity-defying brow higher.
This wasn’t the way things were supposed to go. Things were supposed to be—Lucky shuddered—romantic. Seemed he’d found another thing he sucked at.
“I’m waiting.” Bo added a bit of foot tapping to his body language.
Okay. Now or never. Should Lucky drop to one knee? Ask the question he’d never thought he’d ask and then hand over the ring? Or should he distract Bo with the bling first? He should have asked Charlotte. The way she used to plow through romance novels, she’d likely know eight hundred ways to commit.
So, two knees? One knee? Standing? No, not standing. Lucky’s wobbly legs wouldn’t hold him. And if he went down to the floor now, Bo would fear he’d passed out and try to resuscitate his unromantic ass.
Blunt. Lucky always came across blunt. Bo either liked him blunt or put up with blunt. But he hadn’t bailed yet.
When had the tile gotten unlevel? He stumbled twice on his way to the counter for his bag, and once more on the trip back to the kitchen table.
There, in their own home, a few days after his birthday, with sun streaming in from outside and a dog standing on his hind legs, pressing his face and paws to the glass, Lucky mumbled, “Iwantyoutomarryme.”
“What?”
Damned words. They’d never been Lucky’s friends. He upended the bag and dislodged the two ring boxes. One hit the floor and skittered beneath the dishwasher.
On hands and knees, butt in the air, Lucky fished under the appliance in bad need of a kick plate. Bo turned his chair to face the action. He sat close enough to crawl to. With Lucky crouched on both knees.
And a ring box in his hand.
Heh. Even a blind squirrel found an acorn every now and then.
Words. Who needed ‘em? He smacked the box onto Bo’s palm, and with both hands curled Bo’s fingers around the sides.
“What’s this?” Bo unfurled his fingers.
