Page 195 of Hidden Nature

She leaped up, legs around his waist, and added a long, loud kiss.

“Thank you! It’s the best framed-out mudroom in the history of mudrooms.”

“It’s not bad,” he said as she jumped down.

“And the siding. Oh, you put in the new door to the kitchen already!”

“Yeah, you lost that excuse for a broom closet and some wall space, but the storage here’ll make up for it.”

“I really didn’t expect all this.”

When Theo came down off the ladder, she gave him a squeeze. Then did the same to Robo.

“It’s moving right along,” Robo said. “It’s the first time I ever helped build a whole room from the ground right up. It’s fun.”

“We’ll put in some time tomorrow,” Nash told her. “Since Dean’s got an in with the inspector, he’ll check out the framing, then we’ll wrap it.”

“I’ll provide food and drinks. I can make something now. What can I make? What have I got? I have some of my mom’s spaghetti sauce, I have pasta.”

“I appreciate it, but Drea and I are making fajitas.”

Nash turned slowly. “You’re making fajitas?”

Theo gave a grin and a shrug. “I’m learning how to make fajitas. Drea worked all day, too, so dinner’s a duet. But I’ll take that food and drink during work hours tomorrow, Sloan.”

“Got you covered.”

“I got a date.”

Sloan angled her head at Robo. “Same girl?”

He flushed, hunched his shoulders. “We’re going to get some dinner, then there’s a party. But I’ll be around tomorrow for sure. I never wrapped a room before.”

“I don’t have a date.”

Sloan looked over at Nash. “Looks like you do. Now I’m going in my new mudroom door before I go out and stand on my new front porch. Come in when you knock off.”

When he did, she’d changed out of her uniform into leggings and an oversized green sweater. She had the sauce thawing in a pot, a bottle of Chianti on the counter, and stood working on a salad.

Even in that poor excuse of a kitchen, he thought, she looked just exactly right.

“I guess since you worked all day, too, this is another duet.”

She glanced over. “Can you boil water?”

“I can handle that.”

“That’ll be your job once the sauce heats up. For now, you can pour that wine. I can’t tell you how it felt when I started to turn into the driveway and saw the house. It looks happy. Before, it was it could be happy and now, it is.”

He poured the wine and felt himself falling just a little deeper into whatever it was she brought to him. Contentment, he supposed, where he hadn’t looked for it.

Or expected it, he realized, just as she hadn’t expected to come home and see her house happy.

She moved him, he admitted. He might as well get used to it.

So he took her by the shoulders, turned her, then drew her in for a kiss that spoke of that deeper slide.

“Since this is a date, and a dinner duet of sorts, I expect sex later,” he said with a smile.

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