After a minute or so, I feel Kait looking at me, a smile toying with her lips despite everything that’s happened. She’s wearing a baggy T-shirt and jeans and her hair is tied up, utterly unlike her usual attire, and I think it has something to do with her dad, that it’s all linked in some confusing way. She told me last night she’s going to pursue a community college course in human resources, that she’s done using her sexuality as a means to earn money.
“What are you smirking about?” I murmur.
“Just at you pretending that you’re not counting down the seconds until tonight,” she giggles.
I roll my eyes, and yet can’t help but laugh along with her, delighted that even after everything that’s happened we can banter like we used to.
“Maybe I am,” I admit.
“What did he say?” she asks. “I mean, I know you’re going on a date. But you went on a date last night and you didn’t look so … suspicious.”
I think back to his words when he left me this morning, going in for his final interview with the police. He stood straight and strong despite the bandage on his arm from the stab wound, and his blue eyes glinted as though he wanted to say something, but he was holding himself back.
Or did I imagine that look?
But no, I know now that I can read Tanner just the same way he can read me.
“I can’t wait for tonight,” he growled.
And that was it, the same thing he’d said yesterday when we were arranging our date.
But there was something in the way he said it …
“Not to be the world’s biggest cliché,” I murmur. “But it wasn’t what he said—”
“It was the way he said it.”
“Exactly.”
“Well, whatever it is, I’m happy for you,” she beams. “And I’m happy for myself, too, that I get to cuddle Gizzie all night.”
I smile. “I’m sure he’s very happy about that too.”
She answers my smile and I try my best not to let doubt slither into my mind.
I love him so much.
I haven’t spoken those words aloud yet, but they sing with more and more urgency in my mind each day, each hour, each freaking second.
A crazy part of me thinks that I’ll just blurt it out tonight and let the fallout take whatever shape it will.
But then I imagine uncertainty flickering across his features, his smirk turning shaky.
Tess, I care about you—a lot. But love?
I shiver, knowing I won’t, that I couldn’t throw the L-word out there first.“Where are we?” I ask, leaning against Tanner as we ride the elevator up the skyscraper, feeling the heat and the power emanating from him, a scent that rises around and infuses me with its musky certainty.
We were on our way to dinner when he looked at me with a smirk on his lips and glinting intensity in his eyes. “Do you mind if we make a stop along the way?”
Now I feel my belly dropping away beneath me, nerves and excitement flurrying through me as we soar toward the sky.
He gives my shoulder a squeeze and then leans down, laying a tender kiss on my cheek that sends hot sensations whirling through me. “That’d be ruining the surprise, wouldn’t it?”
I giggle. “Don’t you think we’ve had enough surprises lately?”
He moves his lips down, his breath leaving a sultry trail as he finds my lips and we sink instantly and passionately into the kiss. I gasp and he growls through the closeness of our contact. We only stop when the elevator doors open with a beep.
“One more won’t hurt,” he says, waving a hand to the dark hallway.
We walk into it together, the only light coming from the very end, a soft glow that brings the phrase light at the end of the tunnel to mind.
Is this it, the light at the end of the tunnel of my life? Is this the evening that’s going to make all the shyness and anxiety and all those years feeling like I don’t belong worth it?
I’m the daughter of a criminal.
But does that really mean I don’t deserve happiness?
“I’m not going to lie, Tanner, this is sort of freaking me out.”
He squeezes onto my hand softly and then presses me against the wall, both of our bodies constantly primed and ready for our lovemaking. My womb sending me constant messages to forget dinner, forget life, and just spend every second of every day in bed with Tanner, exploring the steamy muscular majesty of his rock hard body.
“Do you trust me, Tess?” he growls, smoothing his hand around my ear, tucking my hair aside in that just-Tanner way that sets my nerves ablaze.
“You know I do,” I say, giving him my meanest mock glare.
“Then follow me,” he says, his smirk so magnetic I couldn’t do anything else even if I wanted to … and I don’t want to.