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I close my eyes and lean my forehead against his. “I’m scared.”
Ryker doesn’t belittle me. No, he moves right on to finding a solution. “Talk it out. Why are you scared?”
“I’ve never been this happy before. What if it’s a mirage?”
“Princess, open your eyes.” I force my eyes open to see Ryker smiling at me with soft eyes. He grabs my hands and places them over his heart. Ba-bump. Ba-bump. “You feel that?” I nod. “This heart beats for you. I’m not going to say every single moment of our lives will be happy. It would be a lie. But I promise you right here, right now I will do my damndest to make you happy every single day of your life.”
My eyes burn and I can feel tears swell.
Ryker raises an eyebrow in question. “What do you say? Will you move in with me?”
I bite my lip and bob my head. He leans in and melts his lips to mine, but he withdraws way too early for my liking.
“Let’s get you packed up and moved.”
“Someone better supervise the uncles before they start pulling pranks. I don’t want to wake up to a ghost flying into the bedroom or whatever else they can think of.”
Ryker slaps my bottom as I stand. “There’s my girl.”
We spend the rest of the morning packing up my things and moving me into the adorable Victorian house. There isn’t much to pack at Pops’ place, except a ton of clothes. Thanks to my discovery of discount department stores, I’ve been able to replenish my wardrobe after selling most of my clothes for money. While Ryker and I deal with my clothes and other incidentals, the uncles load up my furniture from the boarding house and bring it to the new place.
“Why are you keeping that crap?” I ask Ryker as he directs the uncles to carry my sofa to one of the empty spare bedrooms. “It’s cheap. We don’t need to keep it.”
Ryker prowls to me. “Princess, I want you to understand you have options. If you decide to leave—”
“I—”
He lays a finger over my lips. “Hear me out. I know when you left Theodore you couldn’t take your things with you. I want you to have your things just in case.”
I shake my head and wrap my arms around him. I tilt my head up and look at him. “I’m not leaving you. And I definitely don’t need some ugly ass furniture as a reminder of how I struggled for the past year.”
I don’t bother reminding him I have a stock portfolio worth more money than I will ever need should I completely lose my mind and decide to run again.
Ryker studies my eyes for a moment before nodding. He raises his head to order the uncles to get rid of the furniture. They’re already coming back down the stairs with my sofa.
“We heard you. We’ll load her furniture up and take it to Goodwill,” Wally says as he and Lenny carry the sofa out of the house.
“Now, don’t you have a walk-in closet to take over?” Ryker asks once they’ve left.
“I sure do.” I peck him on the lips before bouncing up the stairs to the master bedroom. The bedroom is all dark grays and blues now, but I’ll add a feminine touch as soon as I get a chance to cash some of my stocks.
The walk-in closet is bigger than I expected considering the size of the house. It’s practically the size of the smallest spare bedroom. And it’s nearly empty. Ryker has filled less than a third of the area with his clothes. Does the man own any clothing other than jeans and black and gray shirts?
I spend the next hour emptying my suitcases and placing my clothes in the closet. When I finish, there’s still some space remaining. I giggle. The old Phoebe would be appalled she didn’t fill her closet to the brink. The old Phoebe was kind of materialistic. Phoebe 2.0 doesn’t care about clothes. I lie. Of course, I still care about clothes. I am a girl after all.
Ryker knocks on the closet before sauntering in. He looks around with a grin on his face. “Looks good, Princess.”
I stand and brush my hands on my jeans. “I’m all done.”
He reaches forward for my hand. “I have a surprise for you.”
I clap. “Yeah. What is it?”
He wiggles his hand. “Join me and I’ll show you.”
I clasp his hand and he leads me to the stairs. I shout when I see the massive Christmas tree now adorning the entranceway. I rush down the stairs for a closer look.
“Oh, my goodness. When did you do this? How long was I in the closet?”
