Page 90 of After You

She mock gasped. “You? KyleAmes?”

“I know. This is what you do tome.”

She grinned, then pointed behind him. “There’s clean laundry right there. Probably some shorts of Dad’s in there.”

He dug through the laundry basket and pulled out a pair of workout shorts. “These willdo.”

She didn’t even bother to try looking like she wasn’t watching as he dropped the towel and pulled the shortson.

“Hannah,” he said, his voicelow.

She let her eyes travel slowly up his torso to his face. “Yeah?”

“Do you think your mom has any chocolate syrup in the fridge?”

“Probably.”

“Be sure to pack thattoo.”

She lifted a brow. “Yeah?” They had never used chocolate or whipped cream or anything like that during sex before. And suddenly that seemed like a damned shame.

“Definitely.”

“Gotit.”

She watched him turn and head out the back door to the garage where the window-washing supplies supposedly were. She didn’t feel bad putting the chore off. Her father had clearly made it up as an excuse to put her and Kyle together while he and Alice were out of town. And knowing Kyle, he’d sneak back over here in the night after she fell asleep and do it by flashlight.

Of course, that depended on where he was taking her. A little shiver of excitement danced through her, and she spun toward the kitchen. A romantic picnic, pillows and sleeping bags, and candles. Check, check, and check.

She found a small cooler on the back porch and filled it with cheese and crackers, some sliced ham, fruit, and the chocolate sauce her dad no doubt used on ice cream. She’d have to replace that before he noticed—and hopefully he would be too full from dinner with Alice to want ice cream tonight—because she wasn’t going to explain why she’d taken that. She also added a couple of bottled waters, a couple of sodas, and two of her mother’s wine coolers. Her mom and dad weren’t fancy and didn’t have expensive tastes. They were salt-of-the-earth people and, frankly, when it came right down to it, it wasn’t the champagne that made a romantic evening romantic. She knew Kyle wouldn’t care at all that they had ham instead of caviar and the chocolate syrup was an off-brand. And she loved him forthat.

Hannah froze with a wine cooler inhand.

She loved Kyle for being down-to-earth and appreciating the important things inlife.

Her loving him wasn’t really a shock. She’d always loved him. But she realized in that moment that she’d been full of shit for about three yearsnow.

She was not happier in Seattle, where she’d been exposed to new things and had to get out of her comfort zone. Sure, that was great. She’d grown up, learned some things, experienced some things that she would never forget and that she was grateful for. But she wanted to be in her comfort zone. Maybe that wasn’t liberated or evolved or worldly or whatever. But one of the things she’d learned was that comfort was valuable and easily taken for granted. And she wanted it in her life. She wanted things to be simple and straightforward. She wanted things to depend on. She wanted to know that, no matter what else happened, tomorrow and the next day and the day after that would be full of family dinners and laughing with neighbors and holiday celebrations and falling asleep in the arms of someone who loved her and would take care ofher.

Hannah felt tears gathering, and she blinked rapidly as she stored the last bottle and shut the cooler.

The cooler that she would love to borrow again and again when she and Kyle made plans to head to the river or out on a road trip. They could, of course, buy their own cooler, but it would be fun to stop over and see her parents and have her mom insist they take stuff for sandwiches too. And then when they dropped the cooler off again, they could give her mom and dad a bunch of the extra stuff she and Kyle had picked up at the roadside produce stand they wouldfind…

She heard a thump against the side of the house and it pulled her thoughts from that crazy daydream.

But this whole thing—doing laundry and washing windows and raiding the fridge at her mom and dad’s—just seemed so damned…awesome.

Okay, so maybe she was going to have a hard time going back to Seattle. Kyle would love that. That had been his goal all along. To make leaving the hardest thing she’d everdone.

But there was something in how he looked at her. And how he touched her. And how he was willing to run away with her tonight—at least a little—that made her think maybe she wasn’t the only one with a change of heart. Literally.

She needed to get that man to wherever their hideawaywas.

Now.

* * *

Kyle lookedover as the back door bangedshut.

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