Page 111 of Faking It with the Firefighter

I grinned. “I thought you’d never ask.” He led me up the porch steps, and I carried Winston in his plastic crate. The cat groaned with each step. Considering the only time he was ever in his crate was when he had to visit the veterinarian, I didn’t blame him. I just hoped he’d love this house as much as I did.

Rex slipped the key in the lock, and it opened with a click. He pushed the door open, and I breathed in the scent of new house.

“Ahh,” I exhaled.

Rex turned to face me and grabbed the crate handle, setting Winston down beside the front step. He looked into my eyes and pressed his forehead to mine. “There’s no one I’d rather buy a house with than you.”

“You mean because I’m your real estate agent?” I asked, and he laughed. Rex may have made the initial offer, but since he wouldn't stop talking about us building a life there, I wanted to go in on it too. So I wrote up the addendum, got my financing in order, and we bought the house together—fifty-fifty.

After all, I could afford it. I could’ve bought it myself. After the billboard went up, I got so many calls, I had to start building my own team of agents to handle the workload. I needed at least three hands to count how many listings had my name on them at any one time.

My heroics at the wedding hadn’t stopped the business; people actually liked that I stood up for myself. My reputation as a hard negotiator ended up growing. It felt good to be admired for something that I was previously ashamed of.

And there’d been some more good news: After Tammy had engaged Travis’s services, she’d posted a video of him promising to try to get the videos scrubbed so he could lie to the courts about her involvement in the wedding day fights. They’d been in bed together at the time, which wasn’t surprising. The fool. He’d been disbarred.

Was I a bad person for laughing when I heard? Probably. But hey—I never claimed to be an angel. He wasn’t a part of my life anymore, and now I didn’t have to feel haunted by his ghost in the house we’d shared together.

“Shall we cross the threshold of our new life together?” Rex asked with a slightly devilish look in his dark eyes.

I loved that look. I loved knowing that secretly, Rex was up for anything. That he’d be beside me when I was reckless, and he’d bail me out when I had to face the consequences. And now, he’d be the one I came home to. “Let’s do it.”

Rex swept me off my feet so swiftly and seamlessly that I yelped in surprise. I loved when he picked me up, and I clung to his broad shoulders, laughing. He carried me into the entryway, and I looked up at the high ceilings, then over to the stone fireplace in the next room. I was home. With Rex.

He kissed me as I wrapped my arms around his neck. I wanted him to take me upstairs to fool around—this time without breaking any rules. Well, unless they were rules that Rex made for me—those, I enjoyed breaking. But instead, he slowly pulled back and set me on the floor. He walked back out to bring Winston inside and set his crate down before opening the little metal door. I closed the front door and watched.

“Welcome home, Winston,” he said, and my cat stepped a paw out cautiously, almost like he was checking to see if the floor was hot. After a moment, he emerged and took in his new surroundings. This place was a lot bigger than my house, and there were even more windows for him to perch at to fantasize about hunting birds.

Rex took my hand again. “Come on, I have a surprise for you.”

“A surprise? But we just took ownership,” I said.

“Well, I managed to get in here a little early so it would be ready when we moved in.”

“So what would be ready?” I asked.

He nodded toward the back of the house and led me toward the back door, which led out to a beautiful,finished deck where I imagined drinking wine with my Rex all summer long. “You see that?” Rex pointed his finger against the glass.

The late afternoon sun glared against the glass, making it harder to see. I squinted in the light and looked outside past the wide deck to the stone patio below. In the center sat a huge stone fire bowl.

“Is that—” I asked, heart thumping. A smile spread across my face.

He grinned. “I know how much you loved your old one, so I wanted to make sure you had a nice fire pit here too.”

I smiled and held my warm cheeks in my hands. “Oh, my gosh, I love it. Thank you!” I wrapped my arms around him and kissed his delicious mouth for the hundredth time today. “That’s a nice surprise.”

“There’s more,” he said.

“More? What, is there a billboard in the front yard that I missed?”

He snickered. “No, it’s a?—”

"Rrrreeeeooooowww!" Winston yowled with every strand of his fur bristling, then jumped back.

“What the heck?” I said, wondering if our new house was haunted. And that’s when I heard the tiniest, sweetest little meow. I looked ahead as a cream-colored kitten with a brown nose, ears, and fluffy tail walked toward us.

“Oh, my gosh,” I cooed and lowered to the ground to pick up the little furball. “Who is this?”

“This is Clementine. Sophie brought her over this morning,” Rex said and petted her little head.

---