Her eyes narrow. “If it embarrasses you for anyone to know you were with me, then find your own damn way home.”
What the…? I scramble out of the truck, catching up to her right as she crosses the threshold. “I’m not embarrassed at all. I was trying to protect your reputation.”
She laughs but it’s not the sound of amusement. “My reputation was destroyed a long time ago thanks to first my father and then my ex. There’s not much more that can drag my name through the mud.”
“I don’t want anyone to gossip about you because of me.” I would never want to be the reason she’s upset.
Stormy crosses her arms. “I was going to ask you what you wanted for breakfast tomorrow because I was going to see if I had the stuff to make something or needed to run to the store.”
“You weren’t going to…” I stop, thinking carefully about what to say before I make this worse. “I can’t fit breakfast into my schedule right now. I usually grab something and run out the door. I often have to eat while I work. So…thanks again.” I’m thinking I did a good job explaining and showing how appreciative I am for everything about her.
But she looks madder.
I try again. “I’ve got some guys coming over tomorrow to give me a hand fixing the barn roof, so I have to be there early.”
“K. I’ll change and give you a ride home.” She shoots me a look.
That look says a lot. Judging by how tight her expression is, I can tell I’ve fucked up bad but I don’t know how.
She locks up her place and then gets into her car, drumming her fingertips on the steering wheel.
As soon as my ass hits the seat and I close the passenger door, she pulls into the street, driving like she’s a day late.
Neither of us speak and the atmosphere turns I’ve-seen-you-naked awkward. And I’m running the evening backward in my head trying to find out where I made a wrong turn with her.
“If you didn’t want to stay with me, you should have said so,” she says when we reach the turnoff to my ranch.
“I did want to stay,” I say as she screeches the car to a stop in the driveway, narrowly missing the row of solar lights I installed to make it easier to find the driveway at night. “But you were smiling kind of tight and then said you were going to take a shower.”
“Because I felt shy not because I didn’t want you to stay,” she says.
“But as soon as I returned from my life of crime, you pointed to my clothes. I took that as a hint you wanted me to leave.”
“Life of crime,” she mutters, then huffs out a breath. “I thought you’d want to know where they were. And I said you were welcome to stay the night, didn’t I?” She runs her hand through her hair. “And you said thanks. For what? The fuck?”
Triple shit. That’s how I fucked up. This is all my fault for guessing what I thought was going on instead of asking.
Stormy takes off her seatbelt and steps from the car, crossing her arms to lean against it.
I quickly get out and come around to her. “I wasn’t thankful for the fuck.”
She frowns.
“I was delighted. Overjoyed. But not thankful. Yeah.” I’m nervous as hell that I’m screwing everything up.
“Not…I don’t…what the hell are you trying to say?”
What am I trying to say? That I’m happy about tonight. That I’m in love with her.
I want to tell her how I feel about her. That way she’ll know I’m not playing, she’ll know I don’t want her to be passerby in my life. But currently, I’m a man who doesn’t have anything wanting to be with a woman who is everything.
I have to prove to her that I’m not like the men she’s known in her life. I’ll never break her heart.
I’ll make her happy and I’ll never leave her the way her daddy did. I’ll never make her feel like she’s second best the way her ex did.
And as soon as I’m done fixing this ranch up, that’s when I’m going to tell her how I feel. I’m going to show her this can be a forever home for both of us.
I knew back in high school that she used to come to this place where she found comfort and peace. This land mattered to her and that’s the whole reason why I chose this fixer-upper over a ranch that was already up and running.
