Mistletoe & Hollywood (15 page)

I WATCHED AS
Evan rose from the bed, the sheets falling away from his naked body making my core tighten as though he was still within me. I sighed audibly and he turned around, brazenly nude, with a sinful smirk on his mouth.

“Like what you see?” he teased.

“Shut up.” I laughed, rolling onto my side toward the nightstand.

He chuckled from near the window where he was slipping his pants on. “I’m gonna let the dog out and lock up,” he said.

I answered him with just a smile and a nod. The moment he was gone, I reached over to the little red box he’d presented me with. I slipped my middle finger though the loop of the key ring and stared at the silver
W
and the matching key against my palm. The metal caught the light of the moon through the three massive windows to my right.
Ward and Weston
. I sighed again, this time heaviness settling in my chest instead of leaving it. We’d talked about it. He’d mentioned moving in and getting married and having babies, but this key was real. This gigantic fucking house was really real.

I wanted all of those things with him. I’d imagined Evan as my husband. The thought thrilled me, but a part of me was still so apprehensive. It had only been a few months. I let go of a quiet laugh alone in the bedroom. We had barely been together two weeks when I told him I loved him. Maybe fast was just how we operated.

The jingling of Fifi’s tags made me look up from the haunting key. She trotted in and flopped on the floor on Evan’s side of the bed just like she did at his apartment. Evan appeared in the doorway and his face fell when he saw the key in my hand.

“Do you think I’m crazy?” he asked quietly.

“No,” I replied. “I’m just…” I didn’t know how to say it. I wasn’t even sure I knew how I felt, so what was there to say? Evan made me happier than I’d ever been in my life. Of course I wanted this house—this life—but it was all moving so fast. How was he so sure about it all?

He made his way over to the bed and shed his jeans before slipping under the covers beside me. “I want to tell you something,” he started. His voice was a low whisper, thick with emotion, and it made me instinctively reach out to touch his cheek. “I’ve wanted to tell you for a while, but the timing just never felt right,” he continued. “When Mom was sick—a few weeks before she died—she started this conversation with me about the kind of girl she wanted me to find. I joked about only needing a girl with long legs and nice rack.”

I laughed and shook my head, snuggling closer to him as he continued.

“But then I realized she was serious. She was worried about the kind of life I’d have after she was gone and she wanted me to be happy. So together, over a few minutes on an ordinary day, my mom and I came up with
the one
. A tall brunette with a good job,” he said, eyeing me carefully and drawing his words out. “And a good head on her shoulders. Someone who could take my shit and give it right back. A pistol. A spitfire.”

“Somebody sassy,” I breathed.

Evan’s mouth twitched into a sad smile. “Yeah.”

We stared at each other in silence through the glow of the moonlit room. I traced my eyes over the curves of his lips and the perfectly straight line of his nose, thinking to myself just how much I loved him.

“I was so scared of never finding her,” he said softly. “I thought I found her once, but it was all wrong. Eventually, I stopped looking and I shut off the part of me that even believed she existed. And then one night, you flicked that switch. You were there and you were…
her
.” He smiled. “You’ve always been the one, Dani. No matter where we are or where we’re going, you’re always going to be the one.”

My eyes brimmed with tears and my chin trembled. I wished I could thank his mother. I wanted to hold her close and thank her for bringing such an amazing man into this world. I wanted some way to tell her that her baby boy was okay, that he was safe and strong and such a good man. Warm tears trickled down my face and I moved to place my hand over the spot where her name marked his chest. Evan’s hand wrapped around mine and held it to Annie’s name tightly.

“Hey,” he whispered. “Don’t cry, baby. We don’t have to live here if you don’t want to.”

I gasped for a breath and shook my head as my sobs faded into restrained sniffs. “It’s not that. I love this house. I love you for buying this house. You’re crazy, but I love you,” I said with a faint laugh. “It’s just sometimes…sometimes it’s too much and I don’t know how to handle it. I went so long without your kind of love that the breadth of it…the way it fills me, the way it lays down roots in my heart…it just overwhelms me.”

The back of Evan’s hand caressed my cheek and drifted down my neck. His eyes were tender on me but I could see the worry in his gaze. I smiled and sucked in a breath before letting out a calming sigh.

“I just love you so much, it’s hard to believe it’s all real.”

He grinned and swiped his thumb over my bottom lip, soothing the plump spot I had bitten nervously. “It’s real, baby. Since that very first kiss.”

Evan coaxed me to his lips and kissed me in a way that reminded me of our first kiss. When he pulled back, I missed his mouth on mine instantly.

“Let’s get some sleep,” he whispered.

I nodded and snuggled into his chest, feeling the heaviness of my limbs and the exhaustion from my emotional breakdown swallow me up into sleep.

MY HANDS REACHED
out for him and only found the coolness of the sheets at my side. I opened my eyes slowly. The room was bright, those huge windows shining in the morning sun reflecting the snow that continued to fall.

I slipped into the long sweater I’d worn the day before and found my panties on the floor by the bed. The amount of time I spent searching for my underwear since I’d met Evan had tripled. He wasn’t just a panty-dropper, he was a panty-flinger. I stood peering out the window at Lake Ontario and smiled. I wondered what it looked in the summer sun or with spring flowers lining the backyard leading to the pool.

Warm fur brushed against my leg and I looked down to see Fifi spying up at me with curious dark eyes. We’d become fast friends, pals right from that very first meeting. Sometimes I thought Evan was jealous of how quickly she’d taken to me. She liked to snuggle with me on the couch even though she was the utter opposite of a lap dog.

I stroked her head and rubbed one of her black ears. “Hey girl, where’s your daddy?”

“I’m in here,” I heard Evan call.

Fifi trotted off toward his voice and I followed. I’d walked into the master bathroom in the middle of the night but had barely opened my eyes, so seeing it now in daylight, I paused to take it all in. Everything in the house was gorgeous, but this bathroom was nicer than my entire apartment. I glanced around but didn’t see him anywhere. There where vanities on both sides of the large room with a huge garden tub under the window. I peeked in the walk-in closet and didn’t see him, but I did see plenty of space to be filled with my clothes eventually.

I heard a clanging followed by Evan muttering, “Shit,” under his breath.

I didn’t know how I’d missed him, but he was standing in large stone shower with a wrench in one hand and a shower head in the other, affixing it to the faucet that hung down from the ceiling. He was shirtless and barefoot, clad only in a pair of gym shorts, and I wanted to flick on the hot water and push him against the wall of that enormous, luxurious shower and have my way with him.

With a few more quick motions, the large rainwater-simulating shower head was in place and Evan tore his gaze from the ceiling and the shower head to me. “Good morning, beautiful,” he said with a crooked grin.

“Already playing handyman?” I teased.

“Just customizing the shower for you, princess,” he retorted.

My brow rose and a smirk tipped my lips though my stomach betrayed me by sinking. “So you think because I turned into a puddle last night, I’m all set to move in?” I quipped, only half-kidding.

Evan licked his lips and blinked slowly, keeping his smile thin. “I’ll say it again. We don’t have to live here now or any time soon. But I know how much you like the showerhead at my apartment. I just figured I’d be nice.”

I hid the deep breath I pulled in. I didn’t need to be scared of this. He was everything I wanted and more. I stepped into the shower with him and planted a kiss on his mouth as I smiled. “Yeah, yeah,” I said.

Evan chuckled and swatted my ass as I pulled away from him with a grin. When I turned back, he was slipping his gym shorts off and turning the handle to test the newly installed showerhead. My eyes trailed south and I bit my lip as the water poured down. I was hungry and damn, he looked good enough to eat.

“I made sure someone came by yesterday morning with groceries, so help yourself to some breakfast, babe. I’ll be down in a sec,” he said.

“Did you think of everything?” I asked in amazement.

“Yes,” he smirked.

“Was that actually Harrison’s idea?”

He stepped under the water and I stared at him through the half-wall of glass that separated us. “Yes,” he replied, his grin growing wider.

“Thought so,” I teased. “I’ll thank him later.”

I snatched my cell phone from the bedside table and pulled up Georgia’s number from my favorite contacts, putting the phone to my ear as I made my way downstairs.

“Good morning, sunshine!” she answered just as I made it to the kitchen.

“He bought me a fucking house.” I’d been dying to tell her since the second I saw that keychain, so it just kind of burst out of me. She was silent on the other end for a moment and I tried to picture her face. When she didn’t laugh or make some crack about my magic lady parts spellbinding Evan, I paused, staring into the refrigerator blankly.

“Oh my God. You knew and you didn’t tell me?!” I exclaimed.

Georgia croaked a weak little noise. “Do you hate it?”

I started to laugh and shook my head as I grabbed the orange juice to pour myself a glass. “No, I don’t hate it. I love it. I just didn’t realize what a little sneak he could be. How long have you known?”

She sighed and I could tell she felt guilty. “A few weeks. He’d mentioned it a while ago, but he called me before he made the offer.”

He’d been that sure of me for a while.
Part of me felt bad for ever doubting it, but it was like I’d told him the night before as he had me crumpling into a mess of runny mascara—sometimes his love was too much. It wasn’t a bad thing at all. If I died of an overdose of Evan Weston’s love, I’d die happy. I just hated how gun-shy I still was. Here was this man making every effort to give me everything and I was constantly staring at him like he had three eyes.

“Georgia, you should see this place,” I breathed.

She laughed. “Trust me, mama, I saw pics.”

“Is it absolutely crazy of us, though?” I asked.

I heard her exhale something between a scoff and a laugh and waited for her to berate me for my apprehension. Georgia and Evan were the only people who could get me to snap out of my inner battles.

“Don’t you remember that you were the one calling yourself crazy when it came to him a few months ago?” she asked, not waiting for an answer. “Only that was an international phone call. Of course you two are crazy. You kissed before you met and you had a sexual contractual obligation to the guy after a day. You found what you weren’t expecting.” She sighed and her voice softened in a way I hadn’t heard before. “Love is crazy. Love is absolutely moronic, if you ask me, but…totally worth it, right?”

I was stunned for a moment by her candor. She was usually the one turning her nose up at the notion of love, telling me she was happy with her lineup of lays and dinner at home in her pajamas. I wished she would find the kind of love Evan and I had. It was crazy, but yes, it was worth it.

“Totally worth it,” I breathed my reply.

“See, I should have a fucking daytime talk show. I’m so good at this shit,” she said, sending us both into a little laughing fit.

“Are you mad?” I asked as my giggles subsided and I thought once more about the key.

“Why would I be mad?”