Page 23 of The Marrying Kind
That didn’t mean I should wait to travel the world and have experiences until I could do it with a partner. That was ridiculous. It was just old-fashioned thinking, I decided. I was a modern woman with a plan. And, darn it, I was going to stick to that plan, no matter what.
But when I got back to Austen’s, I saw that he had built a lovely fire in the wood-burning stove and was seated on the couch looking casual in a T-shirt and a pair of jeans. He was just so dang handsome, it was a little harder to ignore my other daydreams. Mainly the ones where he’d carry me up the stairs with my legs wrapped around his waist ...
“How was the sleigh ride? Chip treat you okay?” Austen asked.
“It was lovely. You know Chip?”
“’Course I do. I know everyone in this town, and most people in the neighboring ones too.”
“That’s got to help business,” I said as I plopped down next to him. Even from a distance, my nostrils picked up on the leathery smell of his cologne.
Crap. That was not helping the heat pooling in my belly.
“It certainly doesn’t hurt. That, and being a people person. I can pretty much make friends wherever I go.”
I laughed at that. “Case in point.”
He nodded. “Very true.”
“And don’t forget Pinky, the chicken,” I teased.
Scrunching his nose, Austen lunged toward me and tickled my underarms, which sent me into an instant fit of giggles.
“Truce. Truce,” I squeaked out between belly laughs as I squirmed from side to side.
He leaned back into his spot, a proud look on his face. “That’ll teach you.”
I stretched my feet out on the sofa, stopping just short of his thighs. He grabbed them and pulled them into his lap, setting to work rubbing the arches.
Everything about this moment felt so easy. So comfortable. So right.
I suddenly regretted not asking him to join me on my sleigh ride. It wouldn’t have hurt to invite him along. Maybe there would be other people I’d meet along the way that I could laugh with ... though surely none would compare to Austen.
“What are you thinking about over there?” he murmured, pressing his thumbs deeper into my foot muscles until my eyes rolled back.
“Just wondering if I could get good at meeting friends, like you are.”
“During your travels?” The smile on his lips dropped slightly.
I nodded. “Meeting you and your family has been amazing. I never expected that meeting people along the way would be part of it, but I love seeing into people’s lives like this. It makes everything here much more fun.”
Austen’s smile had faded, and his mouth was now turned down in a frown. His hands had also stopped delivering their magic.
“What is it?” I asked, since he clearly wasn’t going to offer up what he was thinking.
He shook his head. “It’s not my place to say, but just be careful about strangers.”
I barked out a laugh at the irony. “Seriously?”
His expression lightened back into his easy grin. “I mean, clearly, I’m a gem, so I can see why’d you’d want to meet more amazing people. But there are a lot of creeps in the world too. I hate to think of you meeting one of them by accident.”
“I think I can tell the difference,” I said confidently, though he had a solid point. “I’ll be careful.” I gave him a small smile, which earned me more foot rubs. “Your mom agrees with you, by the way, that you’re a domesticated gem. She said so more or less today.”
His head dropped down. “That woman has no chill. She likes to brag to people about her sons and set us up. It’s all a big ploy to get herself some grandchildren. So far, Jameson has let her down, even though he’s been married for a while now. She’s got her hopes set on Rachel and Noah to deliver, so to speak.”
“What about you? Do you want kids someday?”
Austen nodded. “Definitely. But that’s beside the point. She needs to cool her jets.”
