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“Thinks he’s down with the kids?”
Laughing, he murmured, “I get it. And it fits.”
“I know.” She grinned. “Come on. I’m tired of waiting for you.”
He laughed again at her teasing and slipped his arm around her waist as they began to head out of the ballroom of the hotel where the event was taking place.
“I can’t believe the hotel was happy serving that kind of food tonight,” she mumbled as he took her to the cloakroom for their coats. As he slipped hers around her shoulders, he shrugged.
“They can only do so much with their budget.”
It was a grand hotel, and the kitchen should have been serving decent food, so who knew what the Senator had given the kitchens as a budget.
The tight bastard.
“Heck, my friend’s vegan cookies taste better than half of that stuff they put out there tonight.”
Her grumbling had him frowning. “Why doesn’t that sound like a compliment for either the kitchens here or the vegan cookies?”
“Because they’re like birdseed.” She shot him a grin. “They’re atrocious. Not that I tell her that though. It would hurt her feelings.”
He smiled a little, as always, taken aback by yet another facet of Samantha’s nature he was coming to learn.
Her sense of humor had, over the past few months, really begun to flourish. And, as strange as it sounded, he prided himself on that too. Samantha felt safe around him, and that was starting to show. She was relaxing, allowing her natural inclinations to shine to the fore, and that was only possible because around him, she felt comfortable.
Josh wasn’t entirely sure what he did to make her feel comfortable, so he couldn’t take a whole heap of credit, but then, it wasn’t about him.
It was about her.
It was all starting to be about her, and rather than freak him out, he was starting to like it. Starting to embrace it.
“What are you thinking?” she asked as they strode through the fancy hotel vestibule and made their way toward the concierge. When the man saw him, he smiled and spoke into the microphone that would make Josh’s car appear around the bend in less than a few minutes.
“I’m thinking about you.”
“Ugh, why waste good thoughts on me?”
He snorted. “That’s exactly what I should be doing.”
She squinted a little. “What were you thinking? That it’s time to get rid of me?” He froze at her words, then he saw she was teasing.
He blew out a breath. “Don’t joke about things like that.”
His tone was sharper than he’d intended, and she reared back a little. “I was only teasing.”
“I know, but don’t… Just, don’t. You can make fun of anything but not that.”
She frowned, and he could tell he’d hurt her a little. Shit, just when he’d been priding himself on making her feel safe. Blowing out a breath, he lifted a hand to cup her cheek.
“I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of you. I don’t think I’ll ever want to get rid of you. Can you see why you joking about that would take me on the raw?”
She bit her lip, and when he saw the faint tremor there, his throat choked. “Oh damn, I didn’t mean to make you cry.”
Samantha shook her head. “I’m being silly.”
“No, you’re not. I didn’t mean to sound harsh.”
She blew out a breath. “Josh. That wasn’t harsh.”
