by Penny Reid
But she was going to tell him. Soon.
She wasn’t going to wait to tell him how she felt anymore. She wasn’t even afraid to be the first to say it. She wanted to be the first. He deserved that, and she was going to give it to him.
Right now, though, she was going to fall asleep in his arms. Because she was exhausted.
She had a big day of being in love with Jeremy to look forward to tomorrow. And every day after that.
She needed to rest up for all that happiness waiting for her.
Epilogue
A Few Months Later
“As much as you like sports, I can’t believe you’ve never watched Friday Night Lights,” Melody said as the credits rolled at the end of another episode. She’d only introduced Jeremy to it last weekend, and they’d already binged most of the first season together on her couch.
He yawned and stretched one of his arms overhead. His other arm was wrapped around her. “I was probably too busy getting wasted. That was pretty much all I did in high school.”
She poked him in the ribs where she knew he was ticklish. “What a catch you were.” He responded by grabbing her waist and burying his face in her neck, right where he knew she was ticklish.
Her phone chirped on the coffee table, and she wriggled out of his grasp to see who’d texted her. “Tessa wants to know if we’re coming to Lacey’s party Friday.”
Lacey had been accepted into the Los Angeles Police Department’s recruit training academy, and Devika and Kelsey were throwing her a party at their place to celebrate. Melody was looking forward to it, but she and Jeremy hadn’t actually talked about it yet.
“Of course we are.” He pushed himself to his feet and went to the fridge for more beers. “You know how long she’s been talking about wanting to be a cop?”
“We don’t have to go is all I’m saying. I mean, you don’t have to. I could go alone. I really don’t mind if you don’t want to come.”
It would be their first time socializing as a couple with Lacey and Tessa. Lacey had been incredibly cool about the whole situation, but Melody couldn’t blame Jeremy if he didn’t want to hang out with his ex-girlfriend and the woman she’d left him for, not to mention all their friends.
He peered at her over the top of the fridge door. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t want me to come?”
“No! It’s not that at all. I want you there, it’s just—if you think it’ll be uncomfortable, you don’t have to come.”
“Lacey and I get along fine now. And I can take whatever shit her friends want to give me, as long as they’re nice to you.” He popped the caps off two bottles of beer, then looked up at her again, frowning like he’d just thought of something. “Oh, wait, are her parents going to be there?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Good. Her parents hate me.”
Melody snorted. “I can’t imagine why.”
“I never said I didn’t deserve it.” He set a fresh bottle of beer in front of her and sank back onto the couch, propping his bare feet up on the coffee table.
“I’m about to RSVP for us, so this is your last chance to back out.”
“They’re your friends,” he told her simply. “I want them to be my friends, too.”
“Okay,” she said, beaming at him.
He took a swig of his beer. “Oh, hey, that reminds me, my mom wanted to know the dates your mom’s going to be here.”
“The twenty-fourth through the twenty-seventh,” Melody said absently, typing out her reply to Tessa. She stopped and looked up at him. “Wait—why does your mom want to know when my mom’s going to be in town?”
“Because she wants to meet her. I think she wants to have her over for dinner or something.”
“No,” Melody said, horrified. “No way. That can never, ever happen.”
“Come on—”
“I’m serious! We can’t let your mom and my mom meet. It would be like mixing bleach and ammonia—the chemical reaction will kill us all.”
He laughed. “I think you might be exaggerating the danger a little.”
She shook her head. “I’m really not.”
His hand settled on her thigh. “We can’t keep them apart forever, you know. At the very least, they’ll have to meet at our wedding.”
Melody’s heart stuttered in her chest. She lowered her phone and looked at him. “Wedding?” she repeated to make sure she’d heard him right—that it hadn’t been an accident.
“Well, yeah. I mean, eventually.” A slow smile spread across his face. “Hopefully. One day.”
Whenever he smiled at her like that, it made her stomach flutter like a kaleidoscope of butterflies. It was a different smile than the one he offered up so easily to hostesses, colleagues, and baristas. The smile he reserved for her was gentler and less brilliant. It wasn’t cocky or flirtatious, it was open and a little uncertain—like a question hoping for an answer.
This time, the butterflies in her stomach felt more like a cyclone than a kaleidoscope. He wants to marry me. He was being super casual about it, too, like it was a given. Of course they would get married one day. Why wouldn’t they?
She leaned over and kissed him, smiling against his lips. “We’ll have to elope, then. Not to Vegas, though. Somewhere with a beach.”
He tugged her back onto the couch so she was nestled up against him again. “One more episode?” he said, digging the remote out of the couch cushions next to him.
“The game just started,” she pointed out.
“Yeah, but the Panthers are about to go to State. It’s the season finale.”
“The Dillon Panthers went to State ten years ago, but your favorite non-fictional team is playing right now. I wore my Lakers shirt today and everything.”
He’d bought it for her when he took her to her first Lakers game. They’d had floor seats behind John Legend and Chrissy Teigen. Melody had never cared much about basketball before, but it was different watching it with Jeremy. She loved doing things he loved; it made her want to love them, too.
“One more episode. The game will still be waiting on the DVR when we’re done.”
“But we’ll get spoiled if we don’t watch live.”
“Not if you stay off your phone,” he said, taking it out of her hand and tossing it onto the other end of the couch.
“I could just tell you if the Panthers win State, you know.”
“Don’t you dare!” He held up a warning finger. “No spoilers!”
“Fine.” She leaned her head back against his shoulder. “One more episode, then we watch the game.”
Jeremy dismissed the “Are you still watching?” dialogue box, and the next episode of Friday Night Lights started playing.
“This show is so good,” he said forty-three minutes later when the episode ended. He was crying a little, but he didn’t try to hide it. She loved that about him—that he wasn’t ashamed to cry over a television show.
“Yeah, it is.” She reached under her glasses and wiped her eyes. Even though she’d seen the episode at least a dozen times, it still made her tear up, too. “Ready for the Lakers now?” she asked, reaching across Jeremy’s lap for the remote.
“Wait.” He took her face in his hands and kissed her. His mouth was soft and prickly at the same time, and it tasted malty from the beer he’d been drinking.
“Okay,” he said, smiling at her as he pulled back. “Now I’m ready.”
Melody’s stomach did that fluttering thing again. She dropped the remote and climbed into his lap, straddling his thighs with her legs.
“I thought you wanted to watch the game,” he said, smirking at her.
“I do.” She curled her hands around the back of his neck and slid her fingers into his hair. She loved his hair; she wanted to have her fingers in it always. “But I also want to kiss you some more.”
He grinned and wrapped his arms around her. “Kissing is so much better than basketball.”
“Definitely,” she agreed, pulling his mo
uth to hers.
They didn’t watch the game that night, after all. Whatever. It would still be there tomorrow. They had the rest of their lives to watch basketball.
Much later, after they’d moved to Melody’s bed, Jeremy tugged her into his arms and said, “I never knew it was supposed to feel like this.” Her purple Lakers shirt was still in the living room, where he’d tossed it after he’d undressed her.
“Hmmm?” she murmured sleepily. She was using his chest as a pillow, and his voice was all rumbly in her ear.
“Having a girlfriend,” he said, laying his hand on the small of her back. “Being in love.”
They’d been exchanging the L-word freely for over a month now, but Melody’s heart still skipped a beat whenever he said it. She never wanted that feeling to go away.
“What did you think it was supposed to be like?” she asked.
“I thought it was all about pretending—pretending to want things you didn’t want and like things you didn’t like. Pretending to be someone you weren’t. I thought that was what all relationships were like. But being with you isn’t anything like that.”
“What’s it like?” she asked quietly.
“Like I found my best friend.”
Melody lifted her head to look at him, but it was too dark to see anything more than the outline of his head against the pillow. “Come here,” she said, reaching for him in the darkness. There were tears in her eyes when she kissed him.
Jeremy touched her face, his fingers spreading out over her cheek. “That wasn’t supposed to make you cry.”
“It’s the good kind of crying,” she told him. “Because I found my best friend, too.”
- THE END -
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Miss Fix-it
Emma Hart
One handywoman.
One single dad.
One set of twins.
And the wall isn’t the only thing being drilled…
I learned the hard way that being a handywoman isn’t easy. The questions, the stares—the assumption I’m the proud owner of a cock and balls. Not that it matters. I’ve proven over and over that I’m ready for anything the judgmental asses throw at me.
Except the hot, single dad of twins who just moved to town.
Brantley Cooper gets the shock of his life when I show up on his doorstep to fix up his kids’ new rooms. His son is confused why ‘the pretty lady has a drill,’ and his daughter has a new obsession—me.
On paper, my job is easy. Go in, do their bedrooms, and leave.
In theory, I’m spending eight hours a day with a guarded, sexy as hell guy, and I’m staying for dinner more often than I’m eating it alone, on my couch, with Friends re-runs.
I shouldn’t be staying for dinner. I shouldn’t be helping him out with the twins. I shouldn’t be falling in love with tiny toes and dimpled cheeks.
And I most definitely should not be kissing my client.
Oops…
Chapter 1
Stereotypes were a bitch.
I knew it. I’d lived it with it my whole damn life. As a child, it’d been, “Aw, it’s so lovely that Keith brings his daughter to work. So nice that she’s interested in helping him, too, even in that pretty dress!” As an adult, it was, “Huh. She’s a builder. How strange. Doesn’t she worry about breaking a nail or ruining her make-up?”
Well, screw stereotypes and your preconceived notions, you dick.
And for the record: I wasn’t so worried about the make-up, but the nail thing? Yeah. I totally worried about breaking a nail now and then. Chipping polish was just the worst.
There was a damn good reason all the advertising for Hancock Handyman Co. eliminated the fact I was a woman. When my dad semi-retired, I’d learned pretty quickly that people were willing to overlook our company just because I was a woman.
Several surprises later, word had gotten around our small, coastal town of Rock Bay, and most of the residents were no longer surprised when Kali, not Keith, showed up on their doorstep.
The people just outside of town? Still surprised. Still fun for me. Especially when wives and girlfriends and moms convinced the skeptical man of the house to give me a chance and I got to blow them away.
That would never get old.
“I got a call from the mayor today,” Dad said, absently flicking through the TV channels.
“Mhmm,” I replied, focused more on the cat article on Buzzfeed than another one of the mayor’s complaints.
“He thinks you need to make it known on The Facebook that you’re the ‘K’ in K. Hancock.”
“So he’s been saying for eighteen months. And it’s just Facebook, not The Facebook.”
“Kali, you should consider it.”
I glanced up with a, “No.”
He snorted. “Can I have him call you next time he wants to complain?”
“You can have him call me,” I said, closing the app on my phone. “But that doesn’t mean I’ll answer it. I have other things to do than listen to Mayor Bennet’s complaints.”
“Kali—”
“Dad, when he fixes the five-inch wide pothole on Main Street, then I’ll listen to him. He should be doing that instead of scrutinizing my Facebook page.”
Dad sighed, muting the television. “I should have known you’d get your mother’s stubborn streak.”
Right. Because he was the most agreeable person in town. “She obviously left it behind when she died. You got the money and the house, and I got the attitude. I need a good, strong stubborn streak to deal with yours.”
His lips twitched. “Mine is necessary. I have to field Mayor Bennet’s calls.”
“Like I said. He can fix the pothole, then we’ll talk.” I paused, tucking hair behind my ear. “Plus, everyone in town knows you’re semi-retired. The only person who forgets is old Mr. Jenkins and that’s because of his dementia. Hell, I saw him in the grocery store this morning and he called me Coral and asked me how my pet clownfish were.”
Dad opened his mouth, then obviously decided against what he was going to say. A thoughtful look crossed his mind. “At least he made the connection between coral and clownfish. That’s better than last week when he told Irma Darling that Mr. Pickles needed to be in a zoo all because the cat brushed up against his ankle.”
“Stupid name for a cat,” I muttered. “And that thing does belong in a zoo. She should have called him Mr. Prickles. Damn thing hisses at me whenever I come within fifty feet of the register.”
Irma Darling—no, really, it was her name, and she insisted all gentlemen over the age of twenty-five refer to her as such. Except she wanted to be Irma, darling. She was also as mad a box of frogs on a trampoline…and utterly delusional if she believed Mr. Pickles was as sweet, cushy, cuddly cat.
“That’s because you almost ran him over when she got him last month, sweetheart.”
I held up my hands. “I was under the limit. Don’t blame me if the dumb creature jumped in front of my truck.”
Dad offered me a withering look. “You just hate cats.”
“No, I hate that cat. There’s a difference.”
“Are we talking about Mr. Pickles again?” My step-mother wandered into the room, pasta sauce decorating the front of her white shirt. Her blue eyes scanned the pair of us from beneath thick, dark eyelashes, and her pale, pink lips curved, wrinkling at the edges. “That demon cat scratched my leg when I went to the store this morning. Irma told me not to stand on his tail
, and I told her that if her cat attacked me again, I’d relieve him of the damn tail.”
Dad brought his hand up to his face, closing his eyes before he pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Thank you,” I said looking at her. “The thing sold its soul to Satan, no doubt about it. Along with Mayor Bennet.”
“Oh dear,” she said. “Has he been harassing your father again?”
I nodded.
“The man needs to focus on our potholes. I have half a mind to write a strongly worded letter to the council.”
“I’ll co-sign,” I offered.
“I need a drink,” Dad said. “Portia, honey, if you write another letter to the council this year, they might…Well, I have no idea what they’ll do, but Councilor Jeffries will lose his mind.”
Mom wiggled her finger at him, the bright red of her nail a quick flash of color through the air. “You can’t lose a mind if you don’t possess one in the first place. I’ve half a mind to run for council next year.”
“Excellent,” Dad drawled. “You have half a mind to run for council, and the other half is focused on writing them a letter. Do you think you could spare a little to focus on not burning dinner?”
I bit the inside of my cheek so I didn’t laugh.
“Keith Hancock, I’ll wash your mouth out with soap if you keep sassing me.”
“You’d have to catch me.”
“That wouldn’t be hard, dear. You haven’t moved from the sofa for three hours.”
I burst out laughing, quickly covering my mouth with my hand. Dad shot me a look that was a cross between “shut up” and “don’t validate her.” Of course, I didn’t stop laughing—I’d stopped being afraid of that look ten years ago—and got a wink from Mom for my troubles.
“Can I help you in the kitchen, honey?” Dad asked, now all sweetness and light.