Twenty minutes later, he drove up Izzy’s lane to see her rocking in her wicker chair on her front porch with three dogs lazing around at her feet.
She had a chilled glass of something on the table next to her, her colored pencils out and a book on the knees she had lifted up with her heels in the seat.
He knew that book.
His Izzy was coloring.
That was Izzy. She didn’t rock away the time, anxious for his return, worried about him knowing what he had to do, waiting for him in quiet reflection, wasting time where she could be using it, even if she was using it to color in the lines.
She had to be doing something.
The dogs raced to him, Ranger in the lead, as he stopped his truck beside her dusty Murano.
He got out, handed out pets, and walked slowly to her with his eyes on her.
She didn’t move from her chair and she also didn’t move her gaze from him.
When he was standing on her porch two feet away, looking down at her, she asked, “How’d that go?”
“He’s changing his plea.”
She grinned up at him.
Now that . . .
That was kissably cute.
“Can you do anything, Johnny Gamble?” she asked.
He just shook his head and hitched his lips.
Her face got serious. “How’s Shandra?”
“If she’s smart, finally free.”
She nodded gravely.
Then her head tipped to the side. “We had rather a drama fifteen minutes ago when Brooks decided he would prefer Kelly’s fur yanked out of her furry kitty body and Kelly decided she liked her fur where it was, so she swatted at him and caught him with a claw. The scratch is about half an inch long so not bad but she drew blood. Brooks wasn’t a big fan. Addie bathed it and shared with him that some lessons need to be learned the hard way. I have a feeling Brooks can’t understand English, but he understood that. Kelly’s still miffed.”
“Addie’s right,” Johnny declared.
“Yes,” Izzy agreed.
“Iz?”
“Yes?”
“It gonna take until we’re eighty for you to get with the program?”
She looked confused for a second before she set her book aside, pushed out of her chair, moved her body into his and slid her arms around his neck.
“Sometimes you can kiss me when you get home, you know,” she whispered, eyes to his lips.
“You’re right,” he replied.
And then he did just that.
Izzy
“That is absolutely, one hundred percent not going to work,” I said decisively.
“Are you serious?” Johnny replied, not hiding he was getting angry.
I threw up both my hands. “Yes, I’m serious.” I leaned toward him where he was standing five feet away from me in front of his couch in his living room/bedroom/dining room/kitchen (part of the point!) and reminded him, “I have horses, Johnny.”
“That isn’t lost on me, Izzy,” he retorted.
“And I kinda like them,” I went on. “I also like having them outside my back door, not fifteen miles away.”
“Iz, you got three acres. I got twenty-seven.”
I felt my eyes get big at this news. “You have twenty-seven acres?”
“Baby,” he growled, “you have got to get over me being loaded.”
I felt my eyes narrow. “I had no problem with you being loaded last week when I came home and you handed me that box with brand-new, nude Louboutin pumps in it.”
His head twitched and his brows came together. “You call that beige color nude?”
“Yes.”
“It’s beige,” he replied.
“It’s nude, Johnny.”
“Christ!” he exploded. “We’re not gonna fight about the color of your shoes when we’re fighting about where we’re gonna live when we move in together.”
That was what we were doing.
I’d barely walked through the door after work and we were fighting over where we were going to live when we moved in together.
I didn’t know when that would be, we hadn’t made that decision.
But we were fighting over it anyway.
It was October. We’d now officially been seeing each other for five months (I was starting from the day we hooked up, which I considered our beginning).
Some might think this was too soon to be discussing moving in.
Though my mom wouldn’t.
And Addie just plain didn’t because she told me so.
Neither did Deanna (she’d told me so too).
And Margot, just the other night at dinner at The Star said chidingly, “You two children and this back and forth, and packing and repacking bags and extra expense on toiletries. It’s ridiculous. You need to settle, for goodness sakes.”
So I had a feeling she didn’t either.
But Johnny had just declared no way in hell he was moving into the acres.
My response, as noted, was decisive.
“I need stables, Johnny,” I pointed out, deciding to save the fact that I also might need rooms and use that if I needed to turn to another weapon in my arsenal for our argument.
“I got twenty-seven acres, Iz. I can build you stables and you got a lot more space to ride. When we were riding last weekend it felt like we barely left before we were home. We’ll need them and an outbuilding to put the ATVs, snow mobiles and bikes in, as well as a garage since you’re not parking your vehicle outside when it gets cold or rains. When that’s all cleared out, we can finish the downstairs with bedrooms for the kids we’re gonna have, and a family room so they can have their own space and do it all being far away so I can fuck you like you like it. We’ll redo up here so we got common area for the family and a master with a killer closet you can fill with your dresses and shoes and we got plenty of space for me to do you on the floor if I happen to see you get dressed, or undressed, however it happens.”
I was standing frozen, staring at the perfection of Johnny Gamble.
Johnny was not frozen.
Johnny was on a roll.
“You got three bedrooms and you want fifteen kids. I want two. I’m willing to compromise to bring that up to four, but four kids and two adults at the acres means we’ll be living on top of each other and that’s not what I wanna give my family. Plenty of room to put four bedrooms with two Jack and Jill baths downstairs and a family room. And just to say, sp?tzchen, it comes that time I start planting my babies in you, my sperm count cannot be eradicated by living in a place that has pink walls, flowered pillows and a fucking birdhouse with a pink roof on the coffee table in the family room.”
“Are we . . . are we . . . moving in together or getting married?” I asked breathlessly.
His heavy brows shot together in that ominous way he had.
“We’re moving in together then we’re getting married.”
I stopped breathing entirely.
“And, babe,” he stated warningly, “I already picked the ring. It’s kickass. Guy said cushion cut and called it a halo. I have no clue what that means but it fucking rocks. It’s also four carats. If you balk at that because someone could buy a truck with the cost of it, I’ll lose my fucking mind.”
Four carats.