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“Don’t knock it.” She gathered the empty egg carton that probably would have been my breakfast and split things into my various trash receptacles. The fact she remembered I recycled and composted should not have impressed me.
She popped a strawberry in her mouth as she put the tops on my stash of powdered sugar and cinnamon. “So, what’s in the workshop?”
“Our cover for secrets.”
She grinned at me. “Is that right?”
“I’ve been working on a desk for the office remodel Clay is setting up for Rachel at the house. He’s got a crew coming in while they’re on their honeymoon.”
“Like literally working on it?”
I snagged a strawberry and a couple blueberries from the pile of berries in disarray. “Yeah, I dabble.”
“Dabble?”
“I was under the impression your vocabulary was better than this, Chaos.”
“Well, if you spoke in complete sentences, I wouldn’t sound like an idiot.”
I leaned on the counter. “Sleep isn’t always my friend. A buddy in the Army taught me some stuff when I bunked with him between missions.” A flash of memory hit me like a slap—Jones’s wide grin when we finished the armoire for his mama.
The even bigger smile when the two of us installed it in her old farmhouse kitchen. Tears and lemonade had been the reward for all the hard work. It had felt better than any stack of bills in my life.
Until those tears had turned to sobs at his funeral.
“Where did you go?”
I blinked out of the memory to find Willow in front of me, her hands on my middle. “Nowhere. I’m right here.”
“Liar.”
Because it was easier to kiss her than to explain that level of shit in my past, I lowered my mouth to hers. She tasted of strawberries and sugar with just a hint of maple syrup. I slid my arm around her back, splaying my fingers along her spine under the sweater. Her skin was soft and warm from dancing.
She smoothed her hands up my chest to my shoulders as she went on her toes for more. The kiss careened through hot and heavy and back to a dreamier, relaxed pace. “You know, I am onto you with the kiss thing.”
I tangled my fingers in the weird straps of her pants, pulling her closer. “Is that right?”
“Whenever you don’t want to answer me, you distract me.”
“Does it work?”
She shrugged. “Maybe.” Her hazel eyes shone gold in the sunlight. “For now. But it doesn’t make you less of a rugged, tough guy to share some of your past.”
My hands slid lower to cup her ass with an extra squeeze. “Who says it was my past?”
“Those sad gray eyes.”
I drew her arms down from around my neck, brushing a quick kiss on her sugar-dusted knuckles. “We all have things we don’t want to talk about. You proved that to me.”
She looked away. “Jason is different.”
“Not so different. We all carry our demons.” I stepped away from her. “We have a few things to do today. Why don’t you finish cleaning up? You get to come with me to my tux fitting.”
“Lucky me.”
“Do you need to change?”
She looked down at herself, her eyes full of laughter. “What, too much?”
