Hitched(21)

After shorting out one too many coffeemakers, I’ve resorted to the French press.

I’d take out all the electrical stuff in the house, except I love music. And air conditioning in the heat of summer, and hot food that I don’t have to cook over an open flame, cave-girl style.

Blake saunters into the kitchen as I’m pulling on my work boots. His light brown hair is mussed and his eyes are sleepy and his shoulders are broad. The sight of his bare chest and those cords of muscle in his forearms makes my clitoris politely inquire as to why we made him sleep on the couch last night. But I tell her to hush and promise her a trip to the sex toy factory very soon.

“Hey, my little prickly-dickly-pear,” he says with a lazy grin. “You’re looking lovely this morning.”

“Prickly-dickly-pear?”

“Ah-ah. That’s one nice thing I’ve said about you. Now you have to say your five nice things about me so we can get this marriage off on the right foot.”

“Blake.”

“The walls have ears,” he whispers with a wink that makes me want to curl up in a puddle at his feet and ask him if he could please wink at me like that a few more times.

I definitely didn’t get enough sleep last night.

But he’s right.

I owe him five nice things, because this is my mess that he’s helping me out of.

“Can I do two now and three later?”

“As the lady wishes.” He moves to the sink, lifts the French press with the old coffee in it, sniffs it, nods, then puts it on the counter like he’s going to make a second cup with the used grounds.

I shake my head, quieting my inner coffee snob, because however he wants to wake up is his business. “You’re very good at fixing toasters and you have a nice chin.”

He arches a brow. “Nice chin?”

“Yep. Strong, but not too strong. Acceptably pointy with no chin butt or distracting dimples. Not on board with chin dimples, you never know what might get lost in a crevice like that.” I prop my hands on my hips with a nod that announces the subject closed. “I have a lot to do today—including calling around for a good lawyer—so I need to—”

“Kiss your husband goodbye?” he suggests.

I purse my lips. “No thanks, Mr. Morning Breath. You obviously just woke up.”

He chuckles as if we’re not sworn enemies, like this is just a normal morning for him, and I get a glimpse of the Blake everyone else in town sees. The sweet, easy-going guy who’s unoffended by the idea that his breath might stink, and not at all grouchy about sleeping on the couch or drinking old coffee at the start of his day.

“So I’ll get my other three nice things over dinner?” he asks.

“Can’t do dinner. It’s bingo night. I volunteer. And everyone who plays is old, so it starts at dinnertime so they can all get home for bedtime at eight.”

“You can’t talk during bingo?”

“Not when they’re calling numbers. It’s against the—oh. You mean you want to come with me?”

“Naturally.”

I laugh. “Ha. No.”

He grins again. “If you said yes, I’d count that as one of your five nice things about me.”

“No.” He can’t come to bingo.

Tonight is sexy bingo, and while I’m perfectly comfortable with the fact that there’s a sex toy factory in the middle of Happy Cat, and I can talk about dildos and cock rings and lube with the best of them, I do not want to discuss them around Blake.

Because then I’ll start thinking even more about sex—specifically sex with him—and that’s a complication I don’t need in my life right now.

“Where you go, I go,” he tells me. “That’s what husbands and wives do.”

“Except you have a job and I have a job and our jobs aren’t together.”

He lifts a shoulder. “Just taking delivery of a grape crusher today. You could come watch. Not every day you get to see that. What time’s bingo?”

I pause, and is it just me, or is his smile getting sexier with every passing minute?

“Never mind. I’ll ask Ryan. Pretty sure he goes with Cassie, doesn’t he?”

I huff. “I have to—”

“Take care of the animals. Yep. Got it. You have a good day, my little cookie crumble.”

I manage to escape the house without us touching, which is good, because easy-going morning Blake is like a magnet. My body wants to plaster itself against him even as my mind blares out warning sirens about getting in over my head.

Thankfully, I eventually lose myself in caring for, feeding, pasturing, and cleaning up after the dozens of animals on my ten acres, where I take in everything from horses, goats, and alpacas to dogs and cats to the occasional peacock, ferret, or hamster.

Chewpaca and Too-Pac are happy to see me, both humming low in their throats as they come over to the gate in their raised barn stall when I greet them. The horses across the way are also grateful for breakfast, and soon half my charges are out in the pastures, prancing and grazing and enjoying the early morning.

The baby goats go crazy for hanging out with Chewy again this morning, like they always do, and I get in a good round of fetch with the six dogs currently in my care, making sure to love on each and every one of them, because sometimes Buddy lets the other dogs push him to the back of the pack, and I don’t want him to think I don’t see him too.