“Then you have been dating fools. Now, I want you to stand up so I can take you to the bedroom to see if we can have better luck tonight than we did before.”
She rose up out of the water, feeling every bit the queen that Knox told her she was. For the first time, all her inhibitions about being boring and awkward disappeared, and in that moment, she was beautiful. He wrapped an oversized towel around her body, picked her up like a bride, and carried her to the master bedroom. Her legs were like rubber when he set her down and kicked the door shut with his bare foot.
“No one else is in the house,” she said.
“There will be someday, so we might as well get in the habit now,” he whispered.
Chapter 19
Knox propped up on his elbow and fought back the desire to brush Lottie’s silky hair from her face. Touching her, even lightly, might wake her, and she deserved to sleep until she was ready to get up and face the day. The idea of opening his eyes to see her beside him put a smile on his face. She could so easily bethe oneif everything worked out right. After a few minutes, he eased out of bed, got dressed, and tiptoed out of the bedroom, down the hallway, and into the kitchen.
While a pot of coffee perked, he stared out the kitchen window at dawn pushing away the darkness. Was Lottie his dawn? Would she be the light of his life forevermore?
“I’m a carpenter, not a poet,” he whispered. “I build houses, and my romantic side only comes out when I’m with Lottie.”
A deer with twin fawns caught his attention when the little family wandered out of the woods at the back side of the house. If things worked out with Lottie, would they have twins at some time in the future? No answers drifted through the window, and the doe must have sensed a presence because she turned tail and bounded back into the dense thickets. Both of the babies were nothing but blurs as they flashed their little white tails and disappeared with her.
Is that one of Lottie’s omens?he wondered as he poured a mug full of coffee and carried it out to the front porch. He sat down in a rocking chair and appreciated the fact that the house faced the east so he could watch the sun come up every morning. In that moment, he decided that all the plots and houses in his new gated community would face that direction. The folks who lived in them could watch the sunrise from their front porch and the sunset from the back.
A chattering squirrel took his attention to a low limb of a pecan tree. “Enjoy it while you can because in a few weeks, I’m bringing a cat and a rooster to live here,” Knox told the critter. “And I may get a few chickens so Cheeto will have some company.”
The old, wooden screen door squeaked when Lottie opened it and must have put some fear in the squirrel because he twitched his tail a few times and then scampered up the tree trunk. Knox turned to see her wearing a short, silky robe tied in the middle. She looked like a statue of a Greek goddess with her hair flowing down her back.
He raised his coffee mug. “Mornin’ to you, my queen. You look lovely this morning.”
She touched the mug in her hand to his and sat down in the chair next to him. “Good morning, Your Majesty, and you look sexy as hell this morning.”
“We make quite the pair.” He chuckled.
“Yes, we do,” she agreed. “Royalty in a house that got stuck in the seventies.”
“It can be remodeled and refurnished,” he suggested.
“No, sir!” she declared. “We might ruin the peace if we did that.”
“I agree about the peacefulness, especially with no sirens or flashing lights, or folks coming by the trailer while we have breakfast. But answer me this,” he said. “Just how sexy is hell?”
“I’d say it can be described in one word, and that is hot.”
“Will you miss our hot nights when you are in El Paso?” he asked.
“More than you will ever know,” she answered and moved from her chair to sit in his lap. “But last night could have been a one-trick pony.”
“Oh, honey, that was just the opening act. The concert will last for years and years,” he teased as he set his coffee on the porch, and then did the same with hers. His lips found hers in a string of kisses that didn’t end when he stood up with her in his arms. He carried her into the house and back to the bedroom to prove to her that the previous night was only the tip of the iceberg—which could and would be melted before breakfast.
* * *
Even sucking on a lemon could not wipe the smile off Lottie’s face, or the semi-blush from her cheeks when she thought about the day so far. Sex before breakfast, and shower sex afterward. Then dozens of hot little kisses as they walked around the property. And now they were crossing the parking lot of Bo and Maverick’s bar. Simplyholding hands seemed like more of an intimate act than it ever had before.
“Are you ready for this?” he asked.
“Yes, and I’m ready to face Bernie now that we aren’t fake anymore,” she answered.
“Have I told you how beautiful you look in that cowgirl getup?”
“Just a dozen times, but I’m not complaining, and you make a fine-looking cowboy in your boots and pearl snap shirt. Do all of Bernie’s events have a theme?”
“Oh, yes, but she says the Wild West is the one the folks like best—all the way from the younger crowd to the elderly folks that we have here this evening,” Knox answered and kissed her on the forehead. “That’s just to hold me until this is over, and I can really kiss you again.”
