Page 38 of Rocky Mountain Home
“What?”
She glanced at him. “Nothing, just… Okay, fine, you win. But if you do a good job, I hope you realize you’re stuck doing this for the next five months, because it’s only going to get more awkward as Buckaroo gets bigger.”
Jesse teased his fingers down her leg to see where she’d already finished. “God, it’s probably a sexist thing, but damn I like it that you shave your legs. Don’t know why it just seems right for you to be all smooth and lickable.”
She snickered. “Yeah, sexist, but I agree with you. I had a friend in high school who went all Earth Mother and decided to stop shaving. It was fine during the winter, but come the springtime I swear she could’ve braided her arm hair into a bikini top. “
Jesse’s fingers jerked, and he dropped her leg. “That’s one I didn’t need to know.”
He checked out the shaver, but it was no different than his electric razor, so he used gentle strokes over the few spots she’d missed. He took advantage of the situation, letting the razor touch her, but then sliding his fingers after it down her long legs. Teasing with his fingertips as he stroked. Long motions that reignited his cock as the images he’d thought up earlier were replaced by ones even better because they were real.
“Did I mention that I like your hair? Glorious colour—and very you.”
“I like it too. It’s real, you know.”
“Oh, I got to tell pretty quick that the curtains and the rug matched. It’s this glorious shade that makes me think of trees in the autumn with the sun beaming down on them.”
She leaned up on her elbows, smirking a little. “Compliments will not get you sex any earlier, but thanks.”
A laugh burst free. “Woman, shut up and relax, or I’ll make you.”
Dare settled back on the pillows with a smile. “Really? Threatening the pregnant woman?”
Jesse stroked her leg again. “Did you ever think about going away to university?”
She hesitated. “Think about it? Of course. Plan on it? No. We weren’t in a position those days to deal with the expense, and it wouldn’t have been worth it.”
Her words were clipped and a bit more hostile than he’d expected. Jesse put aside the razor and slid his thumbs over the arch of her foot in a firm massage, urging her to lie back again. “Why wouldn’t it have been worth it?”
Dare sighed. “I couldn’t decide what to focus on. Too many subjects interested me, but none of them to the extent I could say—that one. That’s what I should spend four to five years of my life learning so I can spend the rest of my life paying off student loans.”
“That’s more cynical than I expected,” Jesse admitted.
She threw an arm over her face even as she shoved her foot at him harder, silently asking for more. “Those were my cynical years. Now I’m rolling in peace and contentment. My life one hundred percent planned out—not.”
He laughed softly. “Yeah. I hear you on plans changing. I guess my dad would call that quote, unquote life.”
“Your dad still around? You didn’t mention your folks.”
A knot threatened to form in his throat, and Jesse shoved his discomfort aside to answer as lightly as possible. “My parents are alive and kicking. Mike and Marion. Dad works the ranch, and my mom is enjoying being a grandma far too much.”
Guilt struck. He’d sent one email to his parents since he’d left. A terribly un-explanatory note to the effect of wanderlust and wide-open skies beckoning.
I.e. he’d lied his ass off.
No way could he explain why he’d left in a letter. So he hadn’t, and his guilt was lighter now because he wasn’t reminded every day of what he’d done. Yet while he could go whole weeks without thinking of the rift he’d caused in his family, it was still there.
Jesse pulled himself out of his musings to discover Dare had gone silent as well, lost in her own world.
Screw this. “You ever had sex in this room?”
The out-of-the-blue topic change dragged Dare back from the hole she’d stumbled into. His brief mention of his mom as a doting grandma had started a chain reaction inside of all sorts of thoughts and emotions she wasn’t sure she was ready to face.
She’d decided to keep Buckaroo—that part she was completely on board with. Jesse seemed determined to stick around, and while she wouldn’t count on it, she had to admit she was enjoying getting to know him better.
But she must have watched too many Hallmark movies over the years. The ones where grandmas held out their arms to pudgy-cheeked cherubs had done a number on her, probably because it was a scenario she had never envisioned in her world.
But Buckaroo did have a Gramma. The realization was enough to shake her very foundation.
