“Are we really doing this?” she asked.
“We’re doing it all, darlin’. Everything.”
Well, then. It was an offer she would be a fool to resist.
Mama didn’t raise a fool.
She stood up.
Chapter 12
Sometimes Chance didn’t even understand himself, and this was one of those moments. Why would he pick here, now, to tell Jolene he was in love with her? But he was impulsive, always had been. He had looked at her and felt it with such certainty, there was no holding back the words. They just fell out of his mouth.
Her reaction had been about the best he could hope for. She was clearly shocked, and maybe a little annoyed, but she also looked touched. She looked like she loved him in return.
As they stood up and he tugged on Dolly’s leash to leave, he couldn’t prevent a shit-eating grin from splitting his face. So his timing sucked. It was what it was. He was going to take his woman home and use his tongue much more effectively.
When they hit the sidewalk, Jolene paused to fan herself. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes were glassy. “I don’t know what to say,” she said as they headed toward her truck. “I feel like we should talk about things.”
He didn’t want to talk. “What things?”
“Things. What we’re doing. Why we’re doing it.”
Those conversations were a mood killer. He wanted to simply feel tonight, not analyze and criticize and assess and plan. “Let’s not make this complicated. Let’s make this easy.” He stopped and looked at her. “You love me. I love you. We’re together. That’s it. Just let go, baby, let’s just enjoy it.”
“We did so much enjoying, we never got to talking, and look where that got us.”
She looked so worried. He didn’t want her to worry. “Then we can talk all day tomorrow. You tell me everything you ever wanted to say.” He cupped her cheek. God, she was so beautiful. “But tomorrow. Just give me tonight.”
There were tears in her eyes, and he wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. All he knew was that seeing Jolene cry made him feel like he was a man who was willing to do anything on the face of the fucking Earth to please her. The last three months he’d been nothing but angry and volatile and a total dick to everyone who’d spoken to him. All because he had known he’d totally fucked up, but he hadn’t known how to fix it. He still didn’t know how to fix it, though he did know he couldn’t go back home and act like she didn’t mean anything to him.
“Why do I feel upset?” Her face looked anguished.
“Because we both react to strong emotions defensively. I’m no shrink, but I think we have our fathers to thank for that. I’m damn sure it is better to fight for each other than with each other.”
Her eyelashes swept down over her cheeks and her expression softened. “Sometimes, Chance Rivers, you have the soul of a poet.”
That hit him hard. He had never felt this way about a woman. She made him feel…worthy. “You flatter me, darlin’.”
“You do all kinds of things to me.”
Someone bumped into Chance, and he realized there was a group of people outside the front door, smoking and giving them curious stares. “Let’s go home.”
The naked lust on her face instantly gave him a hard-on. He wanted to take her against the wall the minute they stumbled through the front door.
It wasn’t a long ride, just ten minutes, but every one of them felt painful and endless. Jolene was humming a tune under her breath along with the radio, and Dolly was panting in his ear, wedged between the two front seats, totally unaware of how unwelcome her presence was at the moment. He couldn’t complain, though, since he was the one who had insisted Dolly join them on this trip in the first place.
The house was a rental. The house he’d bought five years ago currently had renters living in it, since he’d moved into Jolene’s house the previous winter. It had seemed like a wise financial decision until he’d found himself homeless after their breakup. After a week in a hotel, he’d randomly picked a place off the Internet and moved in quickly. Jolene had never been there. He still had boxes lying around in every room, and he hadn’t hung a single picture on the wall or bought any new furniture. It was a place to rest his head at the end of the night, nothing more.
There was, however, one thing he had prominently displayed on the fireplace.
Their Song of the Year Grammy.
It was the first thing she noticed when he led her into the house, hand in hand, her curious gaze searching the room.
“Nice decor,” she said, amusement in her voice. “Boxes and guitars and an award propped on the fireplace. It’s like the house that ego built.”
He deserved that. “I already told you I was sorry for lifting it off the wall.” He pulled her up against his chest. “You can take it back to your house if you want. I admit, it looks better there, with all your head shots and magazine covers.”