Page 99 of Revelry
Heading home, I expected to see that Gertrude was back in her house but she wasn’t. The lights were on in mine, and I was eager to get home to her. I parked and hurried inside, going straight to the kitchen but it was empty. I turned and saw soft lights shining from the living room and I walked through the doorway.
“TA-DA!” Gertrude shouted, startling me.
My eyes took in the room and at what she had done with the space. She had made changes to my home and while it pricked atsomething inside me that said the place didn’t look right, didn’t look normal, it also didn’t look bad.
I was silent for a while as I took it all in.
“Tate?” Gertrude asked, a hint of worry in her voice. I glanced at her again, standing next to the shittiest Christmas tree I’d ever seen. It had barely any needles left on its brown, brittle branches and it was draped with the shiniest, plastickiest tinsel I’d ever seen. Large, gaudy ornaments hung from the barren twigs and glistened garishly in the lights wrapped around the bare branches.
It was the most hideous thing I’d ever seen.
It was perfect.
I burst out laughing. She had completely ignored my request to not do anything, but she also knew that cozy and sentimental was not the way to go with me. If she was going to disobey me, she’d at least do it properly.
I pinched one of the branches between my fingers and it snapped off with a crisp break which just made me laugh even harder. Then she was laughing too.
“It was the best one in the lot. I couldn’t believe it was still there and someone hadn’t snapped it up,” she wheezed out between giggles.
“Stop it,” I choked. “I can’t believe you spent money on this thing.”
Her laughter subsided and she gazed at me softly, the lights shining in her eyes.
“It was so worth it to see you smile.”
My laughter faded as I stared at her. Why was she so goddamn perfect? How did she know me so well in such a short amount of time? Everything she did for me, all her acts of service, were perfectly designed to push me or thrill me. I wasn’t an easy person to understand and yet she managed it effortlessly.
Gertrude was tying me in knots. I wanted to keep this casual but the way I was beginning to feel about her was anything but.
“What am I going to do with you?” I sighed.
She shrugged one shoulder and toyed with a curl. “I don’t know.”
I prowled to her and pulled her into my arms, dropping my head to slide my mouth against hers. She opened immediately, I swept my tongue inside and played until we were breathing heavily. I knelt in front of her and pulled her down, stripping off her shirt and kissing every inch of soft skin I uncovered.
“Not in front of the tree,” she wailed as I pulled a pebbled nipple into my warm mouth.
“Sugar, that’s not a tree. It’s a branch with some tinsel,” I replied.
She snorted which soon turned into a moan as I trailed kisses down her stomach. I unsnapped the button on her jeans, tugging them down her thick thighs, more than eager to get my mouth on her again and get that sweet taste on my tongue.
“But, the ice…ice cream,” she stuttered.
I got two fistfuls of her ass and brought her to my mouth, staring down at her wet flesh.
“Fuck the ice cream.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Gertie
“What if no one wants to buy my ice cream? What if they hate it?” I nibbled my lip, the panic settling in.
Tate brought my palm towards his mouth, placing a gentle kiss to the center that somehow managed to melt me yet set me on fire.
“That’s not going to happen. They would be stupid if they didn’t like it and we don’t want stupid people buying your ice cream.” He kept his eyes on the road as he drove out towards Redemption Ranch.
Yesterday I had been so distracted by Tate, then tree decorating and then Tate again that I hadn’t had time to think about what would actually happen today at the fair.
