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Daniel went still, the image of Hope with a large stomach filling his head. Seeing her big with his baby.
Fuck, I like that picture.
Right now, the most important thing was getting her to agree to stay in town at all. From there, he’d work on getting her into his home. He looked around. He didn’t even know if he could call this house a home. It had never bothered him before—it was a place that kept the heat out in the summer and the cold out in the winter and the critters out while he slept. It had never felt lacking until now, with the woman he’d always thought he’d end up with standing there, looking as out of place as an angel in a dive bar.
It might not be the house he’d always promised that he’d build her, but he could spiff this place up into something better than it currently was.
He just needed her to agree to stay. “Give us a chance to iron this out—a couple days. Stay through the week, and then we’ll talk.”
Her mouth dropped open. “What are you going to do, lock me up in the basement until I agree with you?”
That didn’t sound like too terrible a plan, but he had a better idea. Daniel stalked toward her, knowing he was out of control and not caring. “I might do that. Or I might go over the list of perks again.” He braced his hands on the counter on either side of her.
Her gaze rested on his mouth. “Your perks sound a whole lot like strings attached.”
“Aw, darling, they might be exactly that.” He leaned in, not quite touching her, but close enough that he could feel the warmth of her body and the way her breath shook. “But I can guarantee that you won’t be worried about anything but the way my cock feels inside you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “When did you get so damn pushy?”
He knew she was constantly doing a before and after comparison of him. Hell, he didn’t even blame her. He was doing the same damn thing. When he was twenty-one, he’d been happy and carefree and so full of life it actually hurt to look back on that time. Now? Now he was half the man he used to be, and he wasn’t about to start changing. He didn’t deserve happiness, and he sure as fuck didn’t deserve Hope, but if the universe was stupid enough to give him another shot with her, he wasn’t a good enough man to walk away.
Deserving her or not, Hope was his. She just had to come to terms with it.
He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, letting his fingers linger there. Everything else had changed, but he still knew exactly how to touch her to elicit a response. “When I find something worth fighting for.”
“That’s your problem.” She turned and looked him directly in the eye. “I was always worth fighting for.”
He went still, the truth of her statement like a kick to the chest. “It wasn’t right back then.”
“Or maybe you were just too focused on sinking yourself into misery as fast as you could to realize the good you still had in your life.” She saw too much. She always had. Back when she’d been a teenager, she’d been kind enough to back off before she revealed the fault line inside a person and forced them to face it. Apparently she wasn’t too kind anymore. Hope pressed her lips into an unforgiving line—as unforgiving as the look in her eye. “John died in that car crash—not me. Except you didn’t seem to understand that, because you were mourning my freaking leg as if that was all I was worth to you. A whole body.” She pushed against his chest, not hard enough to move him, but hard enough to prove her point. “I hated you for a really long time.”
“I deserved your hate.” It was the simple truth. He’d taken everything from her. He’d hated himself for that, so it only made sense that she’d feel the same way.
Hope shook her head. “You’re as much an idiot now as you were then.”
And then she kissed him.
It caught him a little off guard—he hadn’t expected her to be the one to make the first move, especially after the way the scene in the bathroom had gone down—but Daniel wasted no time taking control. He kissed down her neck, sliding his hands beneath her shirt and skating them up her body to cup her breasts. They filled his palms, familiar and yet not, all at the same time. He cursed. “Darling, the things you do to me.” He nipped her collarbone. “I’m going to taste you, so if you’re going to change your mind, now’s the time to do it.”
