Page 37 of Justice for Daesha

She gave him a light-hearted shrug. “We could.”

“But why? This is so much more comfortable.”

Dropping her head to rest on his shoulder again, she ran a finger from his clavicle to his navel. “Well, I know it’s kinda soon, but would you be interested in moving in here with me? I can’t move in with you because of the animals.”

“Why the hell would youwantto move in with me? Compared to this place, mine is a shit hole.”

“Your house isnota shit hole! And I’m just sayin’…”

He kissed the top of her head and sighed. “I want that. I want it more than anything. But I think we need to wait a couple more weeks, don’t you? I mean, this is happening kind of fast and?”

“So you’re pulling back?” He could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“No! No, it’s just that I don’t want to move in and then in two weeks you find out I always leave the toilet seat up in the night and you wish you’d never asked me!” he said and chuckled.

She smacked his mid-section lightly. “Don’t make light of this.”

“I’m not. I’m just saying that I’m spending most of my time here anyway, so what’s the rush? We still don’t know a lot about each other yet. And I haven’t met your dad, and you haven’t met my parents.”

She gave him a hard stare. “Um, the wedding?”

“Oh. Yeah. I guess you met my parents, huh?” She nodded. “But you met them as the wedding singer. You didn’t meet them as my girlfriend.”

Her eyebrows popped up. “Well, that’s true.”

“So let’s do that. And let’s do some relationship-building things, okay?”

“Like?”

He shrugged. “I dunno. Like tomorrow, let’s talk about growing up. Where we went to school, who our friends were, the activities we were in, things like that. How our parents parented us. College and the things we did there. We really need to know more about each other, babe.”

A sigh floated from her lips and across his skin. “I know the most important thing. I know I love you.”

“And I know I love you too. Don’t think of this as mining for information that would discourage us from building a relationship. Think of it as a way to find the things we have in common. That’s what I’m looking for, the things that will pull us together, not an excuse to walk away. I’m not interested in walking away, DaeshaWilkerson. By the way, what’s your middle name?”

She rolled her eyes. “Morris.”

“Morris?” That got a nod. “Your middle name isMorris?”

“Yeah. My mom wanted to name one of us with her family name. She had some complications when she was pregnant with me and her doctor told her in no uncertain terms that I’d need to be her last child. So when I was a girl, she went ahead and gave me her family name as my middle name. I got teased a lot about that.”

“Now see?That’sthe kind of information I’m talking about! And now I know your middle name! And you know mine, but I’m not sure how.”

“Your mother.”

“What?”

“Your mother. We were all at the wedding and she said, ‘AmosDavid Fletcher, if you’re going to go decorate your brother’s car, you’d better do it now.’ And I remembered.”

“Really?”

She nodded and gave him a shy smile. “Yeah, I haven’t told you, but I was watching you at the wedding. I thought you were the best-looking guy there, but I didn’t think there was even a point in asking anybody your name because you’d never have anything to do with me.”

“Oh, baby,” he whispered into her hair, “you were wrong. So, so wrong.”

Chapter 6

Amos couldn’t believehow happy he was. Everything about her fed everything inside him?his ego, his need for closeness, his sex drive, his intellect. Over breakfast they had a conversation about the physics of putting a cruiser into a deliberate slide and what it took to make that end. She argued points with him, and he was thrilled with how much she knew. Then they talked about muzzle velocity of different weapons. In his joy, he’d forgotten that she’d been a well-trained soldier, and she spoke of all things weaponry with authority.

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