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Let her drive his pickup? Had she lost her damned mind?
“I can leave the cycle here.” He nodded to the back drive as he stepped to the porch. “I’ll just help you lock up.”
“Okay.” There was a swing to her hips that almost had his tongue hanging out of his mouth. And he almost—only almost—forgot about the wine and the truck.
She drank his wine? Drove his truck? And Rory hadn’t warned him ahead of time?
He locked the back door, checked the house, as she gathered her purse and grabbed a light denim jacket from her bedroom. They met at the bottom of the stairs where she held up the keys to the truck. He almost sighed with pleasure as he took them and followed Sabella into the garage.
He knew the minute he looked at the black and chrome Ford four-by-four that she hadn’t driven it since the day she brought it back from the garage. After she had slammed her little BMW into it and claimed it was all his fault.
Because he was cutting the grass without a shirt and she had been looking at him instead of the truck.
That had been the day he had realized just how much he did love his spritely little wife. Because instead of raging, instead of babying his truck, he had picked his wife up, carried her into the house, and fucked her on the stairs because he couldn’t make it to the bedroom.
“Nice.” He patted the side of the hood, ran his hand along the curved frame.
“Yeah. It was Nathan’s baby.” There was an edge of amused indulgence in her voice.
“You weren’t?” He looked up at her, staring at her across the hood of the truck. Because he knew she had been his life. She was still his life.
Hadn’t he loved her well enough that she knew she was the most important thing to him?
“I was his wife.” She moved to the door and opened it before climbing onto the running board and stepping into the passenger side.
Noah pulled the driver’s side door open and moved in beneath the steering wheel aware that her answer wasn’t enough to satisfy him. Yes, she had been his wife, but she had been so much more as well. His heart. His soul. And for nineteen months, she had been his sanity.
“How long since you started it?”
She stared out the windshield. “A while.”
The odd note in her voice had him pausing as he pushed the key into the ignition.
“I start it every few weeks.” She shrugged.
She lowered her head to where her fingers were twining together in her lap and shook her head. She pulled the seat belt across her, buckled in, and propped her elbow on the window before turning to look at him.
“I used to sleep in the truck when I couldn’t sleep in the bed.”
“You missed him.” He was glad for the darkness in the garage, the shadows between them.
“I missed him,” she agreed, before reaching out her hand and pressing a button in the dash. “Garage door opener. I had it installed while he was on that last mission. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
The garage doors eased open, sliding up, revealing the lengthening shadows outside.
“Come over here.” He unlocked her seat belt, caught her wrist and pulled her to his side. He latched the middle belt before locking his own and sliding the truck in reverse.
He pulled out of the garage, hit the button for the garage door, and watched it close and lock as easily as it had unlocked and opened. He’d wanted the damned thing so badly he could taste the need before that last mission. But he’d been saving for something else. Something for Sabella.
She’d done it for him, and he found his chest expanding, his heart breaking. Every minute he spent with her, he saw more and more things he hadn’t taken the time to notice when he had been “alive.” Things he wished he had taken the time to discover.
“Sure you want me to drive your husband’s truck?” he asked. He was pushing her, and he didn’t know why.
Six years she had grieved for him, and in the space of a few short weeks, she’d become his lover, she was letting him drive her husband’s truck, had let him fuck her husband’s wife, had let him sleep in his bed.
The fact that he was her husband was beside the point. Sort of.
“Yeah.” She nodded slowly. “I think it’s time.”
