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Dax’s eyes followed the path of his hand as he stroked my hair. “I didn’t have anyone else in mind.”
A single knot slipped away. “But you would have had to settle on somebody, so surely there was … what’s funny?”
Laughter in his gaze, he tapped my chin once. “Sometimes, I wonder if you really know me as well as you think you do.”
I felt my nose scrunch up. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you should know perfectly well that I wouldn’t have ‘settled.’ If you had said no, I would have kept on at you and done whatever it took to change your mind. I’m good at persuading people to my way of thinking. You would have agreed eventually.”
His cocky answer made my brow arch even as it also caused the other knots in my belly to unravel. “I can’t even deny that.”
“You’d be lying if you did.” He planted a quick kiss on my mouth. “Coffee?”
I nodded. “Coffee.”
As he pushed off the sofa and left the room, I felt my gaze fly back to my new Nina Bowen novel, deciding for the sake of my mental equilibrium that I would pretend she wasn’t his mother. The cover was so beautiful with the gold foil and the deep blue—
“For fuck’s sake.”
Frowning, I stood. “What is it?” I headed down the hallway and into the kitchen. “You haven’t broken the—Oh,” I mumbled as I came to a halt beside him. Staring down at the dead animal, I swallowed hard. “Think of it as a Christmas gift.”
Dax blinked at me. “A Christmas gift?”
“Gypsy’s just getting in the holiday spirit.”
“Since when are dead squirrels considered presents?”
“The laws of the wild are different than ours. You know this.”
His lips flattened. “What I know is that her kills are getting bigger. She’s escalating.”
Yeah, kinda. “Well, at least it has its head.”
“A leg is missing. I’m thinking she probably ate it.”
I sighed. “You persist on thinking the worst of her.”
“I persist on facing that there’s something very wrong with that cat.”
I lifted my chin. “I will again note that this never stops you from allowing her to snuggle into you or sit on your lap.”
He gave a dismissive shake of the head. “Finish prepping the coffee machine for me. I’ll get rid of the squirrel. Let’s just hope it isn’t a mother, or there’ll be babies crying out for her, tiny and defenseless and hungry.”
I moaned. “Don’t say stuff like that, it makes my heart—God, you’re a dick,” I grumbled when I saw his lips bowing up.
“That’s not something you haven’t always known. Now let’s get this done. We haven’t got long before we’ll need to leave, and I want to fuck you in the shower before we do.”
∞∞∞
Sitting beside me at our parents’ table later on, Alicia nudged me and said, “Dad just smiled.”
“About what?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but it’s one for the books. That he smiled at your hubby is, like,wow.”
Wait, he’d smiled atDax?I glanced at the pair, finding them talking quite amiably—just as they had been for the last half hour. Like they were old friends. As if there had never been a point where Dane had threatened to shoot him.
Everyone else at the table was just as chilled, and both families were mixing well. Ollie and Caelan were in a deep discussion about something. Sitting across from each other, Harri and Drey were chatting away. Dax’s parents, my mom, Marleigh, and Raven were laughing while reading aloud dirty Christmas cracker jokes to each other.
