by Jill Shalvis
Parker whipped her around to face him and then proceeded to melt her brain with a blistering kiss. “I’ve got something better than trans fats.”
She rolled her eyes.
He smiled and pushed her hair back from her face in that warm, familiar gesture she loved. “I’m all in with you,” he said. “You know that, right? The good, the bad, the ugly, all of it.” He stared at her like he’d never get enough. “All in,” he repeated. “I love you, Zoe.”
Oh God. Those words. She’d wondered if she’d ever hear them directed at her. Wyatt and Darcy loved her, to the bone, she knew that. But the three of them had grown up with parents who hadn’t used the words, and as a result none of them were all that good with them, either. She closed her eyes. Closed her mouth, too, because she was afraid to let anything out, afraid she’d humiliate herself.
Parker merely adjusted, shifting so that his mouth slid over her earlobe to press a kiss there in the spot that he knew damn well melted her bones every single time. “You’re gonna have to talk to me eventually,” he murmured.
“I’m confused on your need to talk at all,” she managed. “It’s unlike you.”
“You’re right. But as I said, things change. I’ve changed.” He tipped her face up to his and looked into her eyes. God knows what he saw there. Most likely a good amount of stubbornness because his gaze lit with wry humor . . . and damn. She’d missed him so much. She had to bite her lip to keep the words. He wasn’t getting her words, none of them, not a single one.
“Okay,” he said gently. “How about this instead—I’ll talk, you listen.”
She lifted a shoulder, as if to say: Look at me not caring, even as her pulse pounded as though she’d been running uphill.
He smiled; she could feel it against her jawline where he bent to nuzzle her, making her knees weak, damn him.
“You’re right,” he murmured. “I’m not an open book, not even close. You’re not the only one who carefully guards their heart, Zoe. It’s my default mode and it’s going to take me some time to get this right. I’m going to need some patience here, and you might even have to smack me upside the back of the head once in a while.”
“Only once in a while?” she asked.
He set a finger on her smart-ass lips. “No, you’re just listening now, remember? I’m being as open and honest as I know how here, babe. With you more so than I’ve ever been with anyone else.”
At that, she felt her heart melt more than a little. She stared into his eyes and saw that he spoke the truth. While her mind was spinning over that, he reached over and shut off the oven.
“Hey,” she said.
“Just making sure we don’t burn the place down while we figure this out,” he said, and while she scrambled for something appropriately scathing to say, he apparently decided he was done standing. He kicked a chair away from the table and sank into it, pulling her down on top of him.
“There’s nothing to figure out,” she said, the words not quite having the impact intended since she was straddling his lap. “I threw myself at you. And you shut yourself off from me. You were gone for a week. Seven damn days, Parker, and I spent every last one of them pining away for you.”
A full, genuine smile curved his mouth at this. “Pining? You?”
She crossed her arms, feeling pissy. “I didn’t mean that. Forget I said that.” She huffed out a breath. “I just missed you, dammit. A little.”
He was still grinning when he gripped her hips in his big hands and yanked her in closer so that not even a piece of paper could fit between them. “You going to run scared?” he asked.
She gaped at him. “You’re the one who let me go! You took off! You’re the big, fat baby here, not me.”
He went very serious. “And I’ll regret that to my dying day, Zoe. I was an idiot, a complete dumbass. I know that now. I want to be a part of your life. If I’m being honest, I want to be the most important part.”
“My life is in Sunshine,” she said.
“I get that. I’m interested in having a home base, too, but you’ve got to know that the home base I’m thinking of is you. Not a house. Not a town. You. As long as you’re with me, I don’t care where we live. Now it’s your turn. You’ve got to give me something here, a crumb, anything. I’m a desperate man, Zoe.”
She blew out a breath, feeling the last of her fear drain away as her heart bloomed and opened, warming her from the inside out. “You’re a better detective than this,” she said quietly. “I’ve managed to sabotage every single relationship that’s come my way except for the one I have with you. You’re the one I want. I love you back, Parker. Don’t ever doubt that.”
“God, Zoe.” He touched his forehead to hers. “I don’t know what I ever did to deserve you, but I plan on spending the rest of my life proving to you I’m worth it.”
It was the Parker James equivalent of begging on bended knee. She drew in a deep breath and then nearly had heart failure when Darcy stuck her head in the kitchen.
“Sorry,” she said, not looking sorry at all. “But I have to get home and I don’t want to leave before the show’s over. Can we fast-track it to the ending?”
Zoe stabbed a finger at the door and Darcy flashed a grin. “Fine. I’m out.” She took the time to point at Parker and then back at her own two eyes, mouthing I’ve got my eyes on you . . .
When she was gone, Parker looked at Zoe. “My sister has nothing on nosiness compared to yours.”
“Nope.”
He gave her a little smile. “She loves you.”
“Yep.” Zoe squeezed him tight. “Where were we?”
“You were about to spill your guts to me,” he said.
“I’m glad you came back,” she said. “Took you long enough.”
“I tried not to come back,” he said with a low laugh. “Christ, I tried.”
“I know.” With a little laugh of her own, she rested her head on his chest so she could admit this part without having to hold his gaze. “And I tried not to care.”
His voice had a wry smile in it as he hugged her into him. “We deserve each other.”
“Yes, we do.” His hands slid down her back to cup her ass, and she felt her body rev. She lifted her head. “Maybe we should go upstairs and give each other what we deserve.”
They made it as far as the stairs before Zoe dragged him down on top of her, reaching for his zipper. “Thank God my sister left,” she said, freeing a most impressive erection.
He was in the middle of stripping her naked, his hands everywhere. “Yeah, maybe we could not talk about your sister right now.”
She smiled coyly. “What should we talk about?”
He pulled her over him and shoved her hair from her face. “How I’ve been yours since the second we met.”
She felt her throat tighten, but still she tried to make light. “You mean when I mistakenly kissed you on my porch?”
Poised to enter her, he stopped and cupped her face, staring into her eyes, not letting her joke this away. “Best damn mistake to ever happen to me, Zoe.”
Oh, he was good. So very, very good. “So what now?” she asked in a whisper.
He kissed her softly and then not so softly. And then he pulled her down so that he could thrust up into her. “First, I’m going to take you on these stairs.”
Her breath caught and she found herself nodding her head like a bobblehead. “And then?” she asked eagerly.
“And then we’ll move to the upstairs landing. And then your bed. And then maybe the shower, if we can still walk.”
She pressed her mouth to his gorgeous lips. “And then?”
“And then,” he said, voice rough with need and emotion, God, so much emotion, “I want to hold you while I sleep. All night, Zoe. I want to wake up with you in my arms. And then we do the same thing all over tomorrow night. And the night after that.”
Her heart had swelled up against her rib cage. “For how many nights?” she asked.
“All of them,” he
said, and mended the last rift in her heart.
Epilogue
Six months later . . .
A warm breeze settled around Zoe and Parker as they watched a just-married Wyatt and Emily sway to the music together in Zoe’s backyard. The plan had been to do the reception in the house but the day had turned out so unseasonably perfect they’d moved the party outside. They were still dressed as bride and groom, though Emily was barefoot and on tiptoes, wrapped in her husband’s arms as they stared at each other raptly.
“You look so beautiful tonight,” Parker murmured, coming up behind Zoe, pulling her back into his strong, warm arms. “You outshine even the bride.”
She felt herself flush a little and wriggled, gratified to feel Parker’s body respond.
Mouth nuzzling her ear, he laughed softly, naughtily. “Keep that up and I’ll drag you inside.”
“Not yet, you won’t.” She laughed breathlessly. “AJ and Darcy went inside an hour ago for more booze and never came back out.”
“Lucky bastard,” Parker murmured, and dragged her out to the dance floor, where he succeeded in heating her up and making her look longingly at the house.
He laughed at her. “Not yet,” he teased.
It was two more hours before Zoe stood in the middle of the street, finally watching Wyatt and Emily drive off in his truck, the Just Married graffiti all over it.
Behind her, the rest of the gang cheered loudly and migrated back to the yard, where the wedding reception would carry on, probably late into the night.
Parker slid an arm around her. “They grow up so fast.”
She laughed and turned into him, her breath catching at the sight of him, as it had all night. “Did I ever tell you that the sight of a man in a tux makes me wild?”
He flashed a very wicked smile at that. “How do you feel about a man stripping off his tux?”
“Even better.” She laughed when he nudged her toward the house instead of the party. “We can’t yet,” she said. “We have guests.”
“They’ll never even notice,” he promised.
Inside, the house was dark and quiet. Parker didn’t turn on any lights, leading her by the hand into . . . the kitchen? “Not that I’m complaining,” she said. “But I’m tired. I’m going to need a bed to do my best work—”
He flipped on the light.
Oreo lifted his sleepy head from his bed by the stove. Bonnie and Clyde, both cuddled with him, lifted theirs, too. At the sight of Zoe, the Food-Giver-Outer, they came running and tumbling toward her and she gasped.
Each of the kittens had a ribbon around their neck and from the ribbon hung a sign. Clyde got to her first, and his sign read:
Marry our daddy?
And Bonnie’s read:
Will you . . .
Parker sighed. “The one night that he’s faster than she is . . .”
Zoe turned and threw herself at him, both laughing and crying as she squeezed him tight.
Parker’s arms came hard around her. “Is that a yes?”
Speechless, her chest tight with emotion, she nodded.
Oreo, sensing the escalating excitement, lifted his head and barked.
Zoe laughed through her happy tears and kissed Parker. “Yes,” she said against his lips. “We’ll all marry you.”
Sunshine, Idaho, is a small, sunny town – the perfect home for man and beast. Well, maybe not for man, as pilot-for-hire Brady Miller discovers when his truck is rear-ended by what appears to be Noah’s Ark.
As the co-owner of the town’s only kennel, Lilah Young has good reason to be distracted behind the wheel – there are puppies, a piglet and a duck in her Jeep. Still, she doesn’t find it hard to focus on the sexy, gorgeous stranger she’s collided with.
Brady is just passing through, but there’s something about Lilah and her menagerie that makes the temptation of staying in Sunshine one that’s difficult to resist . . .