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“I don’t know why you want to drive four blocks when I live upstairs. No warming up a car, no wasted time.”
“I have to admit, your place is convenient, but my place is nice too,” he pushed.
“You rent. How is that better than my apartment?” she demanded.
“It’s normal, Ruth, to live in a house. That’s normal.”
“Your normal and mine are completely different, Anderson.” Ruth’s tone had gone flat, no longer was she fighting with him, she was stating facts.
“Ruth.”
“This is your normal, Anderson: a happy house in a happy neighborhood where your friends lived, where you rode your bikes up and down the sidewalks. My normal is living in my crappy apartment. This isn’t going to work. We are too different to keep trying.” She pulled the door handle, and the dome light turned on, but she didn’t open the door to the cold night air.
“What?” He looked into her light blue eyes.
“This. Us.” She pushed open the door and climbed out of the cab.
The door slammed behind her, and he watched her enter her apartment. Had she just broken up with him? Is that what had just happened? Jumping out of the pickup, he hurried after her running up her now familiar stairs. Kicking off his shoes in the hallway, he first looked into the office to see if she had gone to hide in there. It was her go-to hiding place, but it was empty.
Opening the apartment door, he yelled, “Ruth, where are you?”
Oddly, he didn’t need to have yelled because she was in the kitchen a few feet from him. He was so used to her rushing to the back of the apartment to change clothes the moment she was home that her being in the kitchen still in jeans and a sweater seemed odd. In her hand was a bottle of whiskey, and she had pulled a glass down from the cabinet but had not had time yet to pour the liquid.
“Ruth Kennedy, I am not letting you break up with me for being different.” He stalked over to her and took the bottle out of her hands and put it on the counter. Trapping her between his arms, he looked into those ice-blue eyes. “Us being different is what makes it so great. That you are different from me. That your apartment is above the office. That when you are up here, I can picture what you are doing. And I love that you sit at that desk down there and read words that you wrote right above my head.”
He stopped and watched her eyes as they stared back at him. Her breathing was faster than normal. “I can never get a word in when Noel is there; she dominates conversations. Yes, I brought her home from college, but I never loved her. Yes, I like her as a sister-in-law, but that is it. I wanted to introduce her to the woman I am in love with, but I just couldn’t get a word in.”
Lowering his mouth until it almost touched hers, he whispered, “I am in love with you, Ruth Kennedy.”
He felt her breath catch at his words. His hands left the counter and wrapped around her, and she went willingly. Her arms went around him, and he knew that her anger was gone.
Lifting her into his arms, he carried her into the bedroom. If he wasn’t kissing her still, he would have laughed that the bed was still rumpled from when they had made love before leaving for his parent’s house. Nothing was distracting him from this woman tonight.
