CHAPTER66
LARISA
Icouldn’t believe the gall of him. How is it okay to essentially kidnap someone?
My heart was still pounding from waking up to someone standing over my bed, but my anger was fading quickly. Especially when I remembered what I’d done while thinking about him before I’d fallen asleep.
Cheeks flushing, I realized he already knew why I smelled like sex. All it took to figure it out was a quick glance up at his knowing smirk and the calculating gleam in his eyes. He was probably going to try to get me to admit it later, too, but I had no intention of confirming his suspicions.
Let him stew over it. It’s the least he can do after making me think I was about to get murdered and now kidnapping me.
After he put me on the backseat and climbed in behind me, he pulled me back against him and fastened our seatbelts. Scared that he was going to bring it up in earshot of the driver, I decided to change the subject and to do it quickly.
Tanner knowing about my little menage-a-moi was one thing, but the thought of the driver finding out about it as well was mortifying. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and turned my head to look at my kidnapping boyfriend.
“Why couldn’t you just wait and invite me over tomorrow?” I asked. “What have you got out there that you absolutely had to show me tonight?”
“You’re going to have to wait and see,” he teased. “To quote this really incredible girl I know, ‘I’m not answering that, but you’d really have liked to know.’”
My cheeks burst into flames again, but I huffed and scooted away from him, crossing my arms and opting to look out the window instead of at him. I was more curious now than mad, but I wasn’t going to let him know that until I got some kind of explanation.
It turned out that he planned on being just as stubborn about it as I was tonight. He didn’t make a single peep about what could possibly be so urgent back at his house, and I kept facing the window, knowing that as soon as he saw my face, the game would be up.
Eventually, we got on the highway without either of us saying a word, and I heard Tanner sigh before the light of his phone screen dimly lit the inside of the car. Once again wishing that I had my own phone to play around with during the drive, I settled back in my seat and tried to figure out what the surprise he had for me could be.
When we finally got to the house, he still hadn’t given me any hints. He helped me out of the car, then knocked on the roof and stuck his head back inside. “Thanks, man. You don’t have to wait for us again.”
“Have a good evening, sir,” the man replied, then drove off when Tanner closed the back door.
I stared after the red glow of the taillights, then cocked an eyebrow at Tanner when I looked up at him. “He doesn’t have to wait for us? How are we going to get back home? I knew I should’ve brought a change of clothes.”
He chuckled, but there was a tightness in his jaw that made him seem strangely nervous. “I told you I had you covered, didn’t I? Just trust me. If you do want to go home after I’ve shown you this, I’ll call a car. I didn’t want to keep the driver any longer. The company is based in the city and he probably has to get back there tonight. It didn’t seem fair to keep him out here for however long only to tell him in a couple hours’ time that he could’ve left since we won’t be going back to the city after all.”
I sighed, but I took his hand when he offered it to me. “Okay, but this better be worth it. I’m going to be dead on my feet tomorrow.”
“It’s going to be worth it,” he said confidently, but he didn’t sound so confident when he finished the thought under his breath, speaking so softly that I wasn’t sure I was supposed to have heard him. “I fucking hope, anyway.”
He unlocked the door and motioned for me to go in first. I flipped on the light in the entrance hall and started noticing some differences in the décor right away. Curiosity got the better of me and I forgot all about being out here without so much as a change of clothes as I ventured deeper into the house.
Tanner’s soft footfalls followed after me, but he didn’t say anything as I looked around and took it all in. Nothing about the place that had been me had changed, but a lot of the stuff that I’d put in that had been all him was gone.
In fact, as I walked from the entrance hall, to the living areas, and then to the bar, I realized that all of the obvious bachelor stuff I’d included had been taken down. The nudes were no longer on the walls, the boardgames had been packed away, the game consoles were nowhere to be seen, and all the random bottles of alcohol had either been drunk or put in the cabinets under the bar.
All the sports memorabilia, except for the wall I’d dedicated to his career, was also gone and so were all the more masculine touches in the rest of the décor. Frowning as I made my way around, I turned to him with what I was sure was a puzzled look on my face.
“You brought me all the way out here to show me you’ve changed all the stuff you didn’t like?”
He shook his head. “I brought you here to show you I changed all the stuff you didn’t like, but wait. There’s more.”
Taking my hand again, he led me into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. I gaped at the contents. He’d stocked it with all my favorite drinks and snacks. When he motioned at the new coffee pods next to the fancy machine, I noticed that those were my favorites, too.
“What the heck?” I breathed. “What have you done?”
“I wanted to make sure everything you could possibly need was here,” he said, as if that explained it. “Ready to see the rest?”
I nodded, so confused that it felt like my head was spinning. Tanner took me down the hall to one of the guest bedrooms, but it wasn’t a bedroom anymore. It was an office, complete with a desktop computer with my company’s logo on the screen, a bulletin board, and stacks of the same design books that I had in my work area at the apartment.
“Tanner?” I said softly, glancing at him over my shoulder to find him watching me intently. “I’m being serious when I ask, what the heck have you done?”