Page 70 of Four Dates and A Forever
She nodded ever so subtly. “You said I scared you. What about now?”
“I’m still scared shitless that I’ll somehow screw this up.” He closed his eyes and groaned. “Like tonight. I know we talked about dinner, but I have to meet with Gage about some sponsorship stuff, which means I won’t be home until later. So don’t wait on me for dinner.”
She tilted her head. “I can wait a few hours to eat with you.”
He shrugged off her offer. “I’ll be late.”
“I know. I can wait.” She said it like it was no big deal. Like it was part of being an “us.” “Maybe we can eat snuggled on the couch watching a movie.”
“Is movie code for sex? Because then I’m all for a double feature.” She gave him a playful shove. “Seriously though, I don’t want you to wait for me.”
Otherwise she’d be waiting a lifetime for his life to match up with hers.
Her features softened as she studied him. “It’s just dinner, and whatever Steph told you or didn’t tell you, you’re worth waiting for, Rhett.”
A lump the size of Oregon filled his throat, rendering him unable to speak. All he could do was kiss her, show her exactly what her words meant to him. But instead of him kissing her, she was kissing him, gentle and tender, and filled with so much compassion he knew he was in deep.
Too deep to pull himself out.
Chapter Seventeen
Dating Tips from Elsie Dodd
It’s not the walk of shame.
It’s called exercise.
The final meeting for Portland Live was held in a large conference room at Gage’s office. Each of the Eastons was present, including all the women. When Rhett walked in late, Gage and Owen grinned like they knew why.
Rhett didn’t care what they thought. He’d awoken with Elsie wrapped around him like a pretzel, both nothing but a tangle of sated limbs. The second she’d fallen asleep last night, he’d known he should have awoken her, but she’d felt so good pressed into him he’d promised himself five minutes. Then he accidently dozed off.
When his alarm sounded, she’d opened her eyes and all but scrambled off him, racing out of the room claiming she had a presentation to finish for a potential new client. It wasn’t exactly a lie; she had landed a meeting with someone from the gender reveal party who was looking to make a major addition to their house, but she was using it as an excuse.
She’d need space to sort it out. Hell, he needed space. When he’d looked in the mirror he’d had, embarrassingly enough, moon-eyes. He’d never seen the look so close up before and now knew why she’d banned them from their relationship. Which left him with a single problem.
What to do about Elsie.
After their morning at the furniture store, they’d decided to test the full capacity of his Rover, knocking down the back seats as they went. And when they’d gotten home, he’d felt this tingle to get into the studio, which proved to be time well spent. He’d managed to get an entire song written in under an hour. He spent the rest of the week really polishing it.
He couldn’t remember the last time a song had come to him so easily. Actually, it was back in the beginning of his career, right after his dad died, when he’d started taking things seriously.
After he’d come up for air last night, he was certain he’d be sleeping alone, except he’d stepped into the kitchen to find Elsie dressed in a pretty sundress and a pair of those heels he loved, her hair loose and silky. He nearly wept. Then there was the dinner she’d made of a dozen different kinds of finger foods. Which they fed to each other on the couch while watching the latest superhero movie.
They barely made it halfway through before they were completely naked. They’d spent the first part of the night on the couch and the second part rechristening every inch of their new bed. Which was how they’d wound up breaking rule five—no sleepovers.
“Rhett?” he heard Piper, Josh’s wife, ask. When he looked up, he found the entire room staring at him in question.
“What?” was all he said, but he knew he looked sex drunk. And everyone in the room knew it. His clothes were wrinkled, his hair finger-combed, and his grin was impossible to hide.
“I was just saying that your new master looks cozy,” Piper said, biting back a smile.
“You were in my house?”
“Turns out Elsie and I have a mutual friend. Elsie let me in so I could photograph the place. Pretty.”
Rhett wasn’t sure if she was referring to the house or Elsie, but he had to agree on both. But the idea of one of his family members being at his house, possibly interrogating Elsie, made his warning bells sound.
“Don’t worry, I only gave her my first name, and I didn’t give her the third degree. I kept it strictly professional.”
