He didn’t give a fuck.
When she wrote her note to him, she was already falling in love with him. When he’d written hers, he was already gone. They’d known each other days but, keeping those notes, they knew. And that frame was a reminder of what they knew and when they knew it.
Ty fucking loved it.
He didn’t use words to tell her that because he didn’t need to. He’d frozen when he saw it and when his body was at his command again, his eyes found hers. He said nothing but held her eyes until she smiled. He smiled back. Then he went up the stairs to take a shower and she went to the blender.
“Okay,” she said and he twisted back to see her screwing the lid on his travel mug, “your assignment today is to think about something.”
Ty made no response, just shoveled in more oatmeal.
She grabbed his mug, picked up her bowl of oatmeal and moved to him, standing close, smack in his space, as she always did, setting his mug by his hip, as she always did and lifting her bowl up in front of her, which was new. He didn’t know if his baby inside her was changing her program or the onset of winter was. She was eating more. Most nights, she stretched out beside him to watch TV and crashed within minutes, that was to say, around seven thirty. Instead of just pulling on her panties when she’d cleaned up after they were done at night, she tugged on drawstring shorts and a tee or a nightie and climbed in beside him. She had on a nightie now and thick slouchy socks. It was November and they’d already had snow that didn’t go away. She was from Dallas. Dallas didn’t get snow and the temperatures rarely fell below freezing. Her blood was thin. She wasn’t used to it. She also didn’t complain. She knew she would get used to it.
She kept talking. “Supply is exceeding demand for Dominic at the spa. He rents out his rooms in the back to the massage therapist and skin technician. The massage therapist only works part-time and her appointments are now six weeks out. The skin technician is a little flaky and it isn’t unheard of that she misses appointments and when she comes in, nearly every day, she’s usually late so her appointments run late. That reflects on Nic, not her and he’s not a big fan of that.”
She stopped talking; Ty swallowed the last mouthful of oatmeal and set his bowl on the counter.
Then he prompted, “You’re telling me this because…?”
“I think I want to go to school to do one or the other or maybe even both. They make three times as much as I make, I’d never screw over Dominic and they have it sweet. It’s like, the best job in the world. A woman looks forward to a massage or a facial; it’s the highlight of her day so, in a way, you giving it to her makes you the highlight of her day. It’d be cool getting paid to do something people look forward to, being the highlight of their day and, when they leave you, they feel relaxed and peaceful. I think that would be awesome.”
“Do it,” Tyr replied and Lexie blinked.
“Uh… maybe you should think about it. First, it costs money to go to school. Second, it’ll mean me being away in the evenings, third –”
Ty cut her off. “Babe, do it.”
“But, we have –”
He lifted a hand, wrapped it around the side of her neck and asked, “You wanna do this?”
She nodded.
“Do it.”
His woman held his eyes. Then she grinned.
Then she said, “Okay, I’ll do it.”
He gave her neck a squeeze before he released it but only to move his arm to slide around her waist and bring her closer, muttering. “Payback is me gettin’ rubdowns from my wife when I get back from the gym.”
She set her bowl aside, lifted her hands to rest them on his chest, rolled her eyes and said to the ceiling. “I’m not even enrolled in classes yet and he expects freebies.”
“God don’t care about me expecting freebies.”
She rolled her eyes back and retorted, “God cares about everything.”
That was the damned truth, fortunately.
“All right,” Ty changed the subject, “somethin’ for you to think about today.”
Lexie tipped her head to the side and asked, “What?”
“We got a kid comin’, we got a shitload of money in the bank and still not a small amount of cash in the safe. The first one comes, we lose our guest room. The next one comes, you lose your craft room. They get to the point where they can cogitate, my woman is not gonna let me fuck her the way I like anywhere but the bathroom. This does not work for me. We need a new house.”
Her eyes got big and her lips parted before she whispered, “But I love our house.”
“I do too but it isn’t gonna fit four kids, us and our sex life.”