Page 100 of Texas Glory
Dee wasn’t growing as round as Amelia was. He figured it was because Amelia was short, and her baby had nowhere to go but out. Dee was tall, giving their child a lengthier area in which to grow.
He enjoyed watching the changes to her body. The darkening of her nipples where his son would nurse, the slightest widening of her hips, the hint of an ungainly walk.
Sighing, she wriggled against him, opened an eye, and peered up at him. “Mmmm. I knew this room was a good idea. It’ll be hard to let people I don’t know sleep in here now.”
“Then don’t.”
Her other eye popped open, and she lifted her head. “That’s the purpose of a hotel.”
He trailed his thumb along the side of her face. “Nothing wrong with the owners having a private room that they can use at their convenience, anytime they want.”
She narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “Is that why you told me I’d need two rooms—”
Leaning up, he began to nibble on her lips. She shoved him back down. “You planned to use this room all along, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “Seemed like a good idea at the time, an even better one now that we’ve tried it out.”
Laughing, she snuggled into the crook of his shoulder, trailing her fingers over his chest, each stroke going a little higher, a little lower. “Maybe I’ll give you this room as a Christmas present.”
“Give me something I already own for Christmas? What kind of gift is that?”
She lifted her face. “You have everything.”
“No, I don’t.”
“What else could you possibly need?”
Your love.He swallowed hard. “Something that can only be given if it isn’t asked for.”
She stared at him. “What does that mean?”
“Hell if I know. Get me a new saddle.”
“Oh!” She rolled off him.
He came up on an elbow. “What?”
She looked over her shoulder as she began to gather her clothes off the floor. “I just thought of something.”
“Something to get me?”
She waved her hand dismissively through the air. “No, silly. I just thought of something I need to tell Carolyn.”
“Can’t it wait?”
“No, she wants to have a Christmas celebration here. I want her to go ahead and have Mr. Stewart at the newspaper office make up invitations and announcements that we can send out over the area.”
Dallas flopped back onto the pillow. “That can wait until the morning. Come to bed.”
She was hastily donning her clothes. When she got an idea she was like a dust devil kicked up by the wind.
“It’ll just take me a few minutes.” She hurried to the door. “Besides, I’ll no doubt get cold when I get downstairs, and you can warm me up all over again.”
“Count on it!” he called out to her as she slipped from the room.
Good Lord, she was more obsessed with empire building than he’d ever thought about being, or maybe she simply enjoyed it more.
He’d be content these days to do nothing more than sit on the veranda in their bench swing. That gift had pleased her so much that he’d had a smaller one made—one that he’d hung on the balcony outside their bedroom.
