“Oh, I intend to. I may be a control freak in some regards, but planning a party is not one of them. I don’t know squat about girly stuff like decorating and cakes, as you can tell from the state of my house.”
“I like your house. It’s comfortable, cozy.” Rhett lazily stroked her backside, nuzzled in her hair. He could touch her for hours and never get tired of the feel of her skin, her body.
“Are you moving or making out?” Eve asked from the hallway. “Get the lead out, Rhett, I want to go home before midnight.”
Rhett smiled and took a step back from Shawn. “And with that, Eve shatters the mood.” He glanced over Shawn’s shoulder at his sister-in-law. “Carry this mattress set out to the truck, Eve, and we’re all set. Show us your muscle.”
“You think I can’t?” Eve rolled her eyes. “I’ve got this.”
Rhett stepped aside, pulling Shawn with him, as Eve and Nolan came in and hauled the mattress back out, Eve swearing but not looking like she was overly strained.
“You did that on purpose,” Shawn said to him, clearly amused as she lifted one of the boxes off the floor. “You played Eve.”
“We’re all competitive. It’s not hard.” Rhett picked up the other box and grinned at Shawn. “We both know all I need to do is dare you to do something, and you fall for it every time.”
She laughed. “I can’t deny it. All I can do is hope you don’t abuse your power.”
“I’ll never dare you to do anything that matters, I promise.” He grew serious, wanting her to understand. “I’ll never dare you in bed, I hope you know that. That wouldn’t be fair.”
Her smile disappeared. “This is that trust thing again, isn’t it?”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “I want to sleep in your bed tonight. Not to have sex, but just to be near you, to hold you. Do you trust me not to initiate sex?”
She stood, bulky box in her arms, and moistened her lips, her brown eyes darker than usual. “What if I want you to initiate sex?”
He felt a sharp kick of lust. “Do you?”
“Yes. I do.”
That was what he wanted to hear. He wanted her to be straightforward, honest with him. No game playing. “It would be my pleasure, then.”
Even with the dual boxes between them, he leaned over and kissed her. “I’m going to make you come harder than you’ve ever come,” he promised her, voice low, his desire intense.
“You’d better,” she told him. “I’m trusting you.”
That right there turned him on. It meant everything to him that she trusted him. “You’ve put your trust in the right man, Shawn.”
Shawn hoped so. She did trust Rhett, though she still had a niggling concern in the back of her mind that she was going to regret this marriage, their relationship, the sex. That when all was said and done, she was going to get hurt. But she couldn’t stop it. There was no way she could live in the same house with him, pretending to be his wife in public, and not want as much as she could have. His green eyes were so intense, so serious, so committed, that she knew she couldn’t spend night after night with him down the hall in the guest room while she yearned for another immersion into the pleasure he had shown her.
It wasn’t logical. Nor was it smart. But it was what she wanted.
“I know,” she told him, and it was true. She had asked him to enter into a marriage of convenience with her days after they had met. She could have found herself in a disastrous situation with a guy who would manipulate and use her need for secrecy to his advantage. She could have wound up with a slob or a mooch who expected her to be his housekeeper. She could have found herself having to ditch the whole insane idea, losing the track, and facing public humiliation.
So yes, she trusted Rhett.
It seemed stupidly obvious now to her.
Her fear of regrets didn’t stem from concern that he would in some way make things difficult for her, it was that he wouldn’t. Her fear was that she would fall for him, and that in the end, it would hurt to let him go. That if she allowed him to be a part of her life, it would be lonely when he left.
But it was too late to worry about any of that. She was in and, much like him, once in, she was all in.
Nolan and Eve reappeared for the box spring. “Seriously?” Eve complained. “You two are doing nothing but making moony eyes at each other. I’m starting to get pissed.”
“My wife is very romantic,” Nolan told them.
“Sorry,” Shawn muttered. “We were just making some plans.”
“That don’t include the two of you,” Rhett said. “So we would like to thank you very much for helping out, but I know you’re both busy, so you can head home now.”
Well, that was a little obvious. Shawn followed Rhett down the hallway, wondering if he was going to give that same speech to his sister and her husband. Though truth be told, there wasn’t really anything left in the apartment, aside from a lonely vacuum, which Jeannie was using on the worn carpet, and a random floor lamp.
“I should be offended, but I’m just grateful,” Eve said. “I want to get a run in before I collapse for the night.” But then she added, “Shawn, can I talk to you for a second before I leave?”
“Sure.” Shawn looked at her expectantly, no idea what Eve would want to say, but suspecting it wasn’t anything particularly positive.
“Alone,” Eve said bluntly.
Wonderful. “Sure,” she said, less enthusiastic. She turned and went down the hallway, figuring they could use the now-empty bedroom.
Once inside, she rounded on Eve, arms crossed, unable to prevent her defensiveness.
“Whoa, tiger, pull back your claws. I come in peace.” Eve held up her hands. “I just want to ask you if, you know, everything is okay. If you’re happy.” Then without waiting for a response, she winced. “God, that sounded so asinine. Sorry. I just want you to know that if you regret your impulsive decision to marry Rhett, we can get you out of it. This isn’t like the tattoos we had done when we were trying to best each other with our obnoxiousness. We don’t need laser removal, a physician, and a few grand to get you out of this. A hundred bucks on the Internet and we can have you divorced.”
Shawn almost laughed. Almost. Because she was still annoyed about the tattoo ten years after the fact, she didn’t. “It’s your fault we have such bad ink, you know. I’m never going to admit otherwise.”
“It’s your fault, too!” Eve protested. “You started it by egging me on about coming in last at the fair when I entered a shooting contest and slipped on a discarded onion ring and shot the light out.”
“Yeah, then you told me that the only way I was going to get a guy between my thighs was if I tattooed one there. And that Stoney White, who you know I had a massive crush on, had called me lanky and had mimicked a pelican walking. That was bullshit.”
“I did you a favor. Stoney White was a loser. His name was Stoney, for Chrissake. Plus I didn’t make you take that car bomb. Or the second. You were bound and determined to prove to Stoney that you could do a shot of whiskey in thirty seconds.”
Huh. Perhaps she hadn’t matured as much as she thought in the last decade. It seemed her seduction techniques had not improved. “Well, I could. It wasn’t just bragging. I still can, you know.”
“And I still have a tattoo on my inner thigh that says ‘Open 24 hours.’ ”
Shawn grinned. “That was a beautiful night, wasn’t it? We were such idiots, but damn, we always had fun.” She wondered why Rhett hadn’t said anything about her tattoo. He had certainly been down between her thighs, so he had to have seen it. Most men burst out laughing the first time they got a glimpse of it.