Husband Fur Hire (Bears Fur Hire #1)(24)

“Listen, I’m not always going to say the right things,” he said on a breath as he slid his hand over hers. “I’m not good with words, and I’m not good with anticipating a woman’s needs. Not yet. I’ll ask you to be patient with me and to know I’ll never mean to hurt you, but sometimes I will, because I’m a bullheaded man with no experience making someone else happy.”

“Oh, Ian.” She squeezed her eyes more tightly closed and clutched onto his hand harder. “I’m sorry for making you feel like you’re always saying the wrong thing. You’re doing so well around here. Around me. I suspect we’ll both poke at each other’s nerves while we get to know our way around one another. And you don’t have to apologize about not being good with words. I can tell you don’t talk much. You’re a quiet man, and I like that about you. When you say something, I know you mean it, and that you’re only talking because it’s important to you. I’ll be more patient, okay? And Ian?”

“Yeah?”

“You do make me happy.”

Ian inhaled sharply, then let his breath out slow, as if he was releasing all his tension with it. Then he lifted her hand slowly to his cheek.

Elyse gasped at how smooth his skin was under her touch. Lifting her other hand, she felt her way around his clean-shaven face, imagining what he looked like without it being shielded by scruff. Ian held his palms pressed against the backs of her hands, as if he didn’t want her to stop touching him, and when she ran her thumbs under his eyes, she could tell they were closed from the way his lashes rested on his cheeks. With emotion filling her heart, she smiled and sighed in contentment. He’d shaved for her because he didn’t want to hurt her when they kissed. Big, burly, leather-tough mountain man, and he’d done the nicest thing any man had ever done for her. He’d thought of her comfort above his own.

She tilted her head back and stood on tiptoes, eyes still closed as she pressed her lips gently against his. There was no more scratch, no more tenderness, no more ache blooming on her skin. There was just this connection that she could fall into and get lost in. His mouth moved slowly against hers, as if he was savoring her and reveling in this moment. She was falling. Falling for her fiancé so hard it was scary. She didn’t want to hit the rocks below. She just wanted this dipping stomach feeling to last on and on.

Ian eased back and hugged her tight, lifting her feet off the ground. “I’m going to take you on a date, but not today. It don’t feel right after you being upset earlier, and I’ve been to Galena before. There’s nothing there that would be big enough for our first date. I’ll take you out tomorrow, okay?”

Elyse hugged his shoulders tight. “Will it be your first real date?”

Ian huffed a laugh. “First real one, yes.”

“Will you tell me what we’re doing for it?”

“No, I want it to be a surprise.”

“Can I see your face now?”

Ian hesitated. “Okay.” He laid a soft peck on her cheek and let his lips linger there, stalling.

Leaning back, she beheld his clean-shaven face for the first time, and it drew a gasp of aw from her lips. The lines of his face were sharp and strong and too beautiful to be hidden behind facial hair. His bright blue eyes were worried as he searched her face, but he didn’t need to be. He was the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on. His hair was cut short on the sides, and longer on top. Where it had looked shaggy before with his beard, he now looked devastatingly perfect. Like a model on the billboards in Anchorage.

“You don’t have to say anything,” he whispered as the corners of his lips turned up. “You say enough with your eyes.”

“You’re intimidating,” she admitted, unable to take her gaze from his face. Ian Silver was too handsome for her plainness.

Ian brushed his thumb across her cheek and cupped the back of her neck, massaging gently. He let off a shaky breath and murmured, “Not as intimidating as you. Tell me, Elyse, did you put on make-up for me?”

Her words stayed clogged in her thickening throat, so she nodded.

“Why?”

She swallowed hard and dropped her gaze to the off-white T-shirt that clung to his powerful torso. “Because I want to be pretty for you. I want you to like me the way I like you.”

Ian lifted her hand to his chest and pressed it there, right over his heart. It pounded as fast as hers was right now. “I do. Make-up or no, you have me.”

“I thought you were bad with words.”

Ian chuckled and led her to the door. He grabbed both of their jackets off the coat rack with one oversize hand, then closed the door behind them. And when they made their way over the yard to his truck, he surprised her utterly by pulling the door open like a gentleman. And as she buckled her seatbelt, he watched her with an unfathomable expression. One that made her draw up and smile shyly at him.

He said he could read her eyes, but he didn’t see how animated his own face became when he was around her. Earlier he’d said he liked her, but his eyes said more than that. Whatever was happening between them was bigger than like.

And as he strode around the front of his truck, she could see it in his smile. He made her happy, but she made him happy, too.

The inside of his truck was clean and smelled like old leather. Ian turned the key, and the engine roared to life. His radio only got one station, the one out of Galena, but the DJ was on a role with songs she remembered from high school. Every time Ian looked over at her with a smile that was now easier to see without his beard, she felt like she was flying. Window rolled down, she let her fingers catch the late-summer breeze as Ian turned onto the main dirt road that led to town. It was a forty-five minute drive, and he was quiet on the way, but it wasn’t an awkward silence. Ian was a man who didn’t waste words. He didn’t talk just to hear himself as Cole had done. And back in the cabin, he hadn’t charged in there after their spat and demanded she admit she was wrong. He’d gone into his room, thought about why she was disappointed, done something sweet by shaving for her, then compromised about taking her out. He was thoughtful in ways that surprised her, coming from a man who looked like him.