He was thinking he didn’t mind doing that time because he walked out and found all that.
Standing there, staring at the display, Walker remembered her sitting in the booth after the waitress gave back the camera, head bent, looking at the photos on the display and muttering, “Need another frame. The mantel is looking naked.”
Her muttering had proved him right. She was making him a home, them a home because she’d never had one either, and she intended to keep doing it.
He turned off the camera and set it on the dresser. Then he joined her in bed, curling into her back, his arm going around her pulling her close. He did this every night since he took a shot at trusting her and made them a them. And like every night, in her sleep, she snuggled closer before settling and he knew she wouldn’t detach because every morning since they became them he woke up with his wife tucked right there.
And like every night since they became them, he fell asleep smelling her hair, not a correctional institute filled with men, feeling her body tight against his, not rough covers, the air cool, not hot as fuck and moonlight shining through huge-ass windows not small ones covered by bars.
But that night, he fell asleep thinking it was whacked, fucking insane but it was true.
He didn’t mind doing that time when doing it meant he would walk out to Lexie.
Chapter Eleven
Filled with Brightness
“Babe.”
I looked up at Ty’s call to see he was standing in the opened, wood framed glass door to the front deck, hand still on the handle, a funny look on his face
It was Sunday, a week and a half after I got my job and we’d celebrated and it had been a week and a half where I’d spent a good amount of effort at keeping him distracted from his grand plan o’ vengeance.
And, as far as I knew, I’d been successful.
Mostly, I did this with sex.
But we couldn’t have sex every minute we weren’t working or eating (alas) so I’d had to get creative.
And that creativity was helped by Laurie, who came into the salon to have her hair cut and highlighted. While she was waiting for Dominic to finish with a client, I’d shared with her my deck plant vision but lack of experience seeing as I’d lived in an apartment the entirety of my adult life but had managed to keep a houseplant alive for a few years so I had hope if not knowledge. In return, she’d shared that Betty of Ned and Betty owned the Carnal Hotel and the healthy, abundant flowers outside were her doing. Then she’d phoned Betty while sitting in Dominic’s chair and about seven seconds later Betty had walked through the doors of Carnal Spa to give me a very long but friendly lecture about keeping outdoor plants alive in the Colorado Mountains.
I took notes.
Three pages of them.
Dominic’s “spa”, by the way, was really just a hair stylist that did manis and pedis. But Dominic’s gay partner Daniel was building a couple of rooms at the back where he was hoping to expand into facials and massages.
“If the biker babes in this freaking town do facials and massages,” he’d said. “Color me stunned when I found out the bitches got manis and pedis. Been living amongst them for years, still do not understand them. I get you wanna dip your toe into rough and tumble but attach your ball and chain to it? Uh… no. When your man doesn’t bother to shave or get a haircut, my guess would be you wouldn’t want a French pedicure. But I started that trade and those biker bitches were all over it. There you go. I may be fucked with facials, that might be taking it a shade too far, but you can’t know unless you try.”
By the way, my pay stunk but Dominic was hysterical, the work was entirely stress free, I got paid enough to cover the gas to drive down and then some, it was something to do with my days, it was doing something where I met half the town (the female half) and it came with free manis and pedis and half off Dominic doing your hair. And since he was a master and I liked my manis and pedis, I thought it was awesome.
So, since I had Betty’s tutelage, the minute Ty got home on Saturday afternoon, I pounced.
And I did this by announcing, “Garden center is open on Saturday until eight.”
To this he’d replied distractedly, head bent to his phone, thumb moving over the keypad, texting someone, “Go on, mama, I got somethin’ I need to do.”
Alarm bells sounded since he didn’t share that something he needed to do. It wasn’t like we were attached at the hip but unless he was working out, there weren’t many somethings he had to do that took him away from me and I suspected the something he had to do was vengeance related.
I thought fast then called his name softly.
His head came up and turned to me.
“I’ve been, um… thinking about the, uh… money you owe me,” I started.
That was when I watched his body get tight.
So I quickly went on, “I’ve decided to, uh… donate it to the cause.”