Page 69 of Hot Stuff
Walker turns us to face his sister and now I’m the one with a red face. But I don’t back down from difficult situations and I keep my eyes on her.
“Wow. Okay.” Her eyes land on her brother and soften. “I get it. It’s palpable, like I can reach over and touch it.”
The moment hangs. Shelby’s words seem to echo around us or maybe they’re just in my head.
I get what she’s saying because I feel it. Whenever Walker is near there’s a charge in the air. And the way he looks at me?
God. There’s something visceral about the way he looks at me. A physical aspect to that blue-gray gaze that trails over me like fingertips leaving my skin coated in goose bumps.
I’ve never encountered it before. Don’t know how to deal with it other than wrapping myself around him and kissing him stupid.
Except I can’t do that every time he looks my way. Case in point, last night. All the glances, the innocent touches, his warmth beside me.
I tilt my head so I can see his eyes. The emotions swirling in them steal my breath.
I may have said the words I love you and felt them before now but right here, in this moment in front of his sister, I know it doesn’t matter what comes at us. We’re going to make it.
I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life, and I was pretty damn sure about Rogue sportswear and the Rogues franchise. Hell, I put millions of dollars into both.
I’d put everything I have into Walker.
I’d lay it all on the line for us.
“Oak.” His forehead lowers and rests on mine. “I…”
His eyelids lower over the storm gray clouds in his eyes and I know he’s feeling this moment as deeply as I am.
It’s scary how in sync we are. And yet it’s not.
The rightness I feel being in his arms whether in or out of bed is a sensation I’ve never had before.
Not when we broke our first million in profit, not when I inked my name on a contract KAW had spent months vying for.
“Okay, you know what, I think I should leave.”
“No!”
“Don’t go.”
We talk over each other as we whip around to look at Shelby but it’s me who convinces her to stay.
“Please. I want to show you those proofs and I’d like to spend some time together. I feel like I know you through Walker but it’s not the same as talking to you.”
“I don’t—” She huffs out a breath. “You know what, I’d like that too. I’ll be honest, I was skeptical at first and I thought the pictures of the two of you online were staged but seeing you together this morning…yeah, if you don’t mind me interrupting your day, I’d love to hang out a while.”
“Excellent.”
“Go get your laptop,” Walker nudges me toward the living room. “I’ll get breakfast on the table, including coffee, in about ten minutes.”
“You don’t?—”
“I really like the idea of you and my sister hanging out.”
“Well, that’s a first. Quick, Oakley, let’s go before he changes his mind.”
Shelby scoots around the kitchen island and hooks her arm through mine. I let her lead me away, but my gaze is on Walker.
I see love and pleasure in his gaze, and I have to wonder about Shelby’s comment of this being a first. I don’t wonder long.
