The Family You Make (Sunrise Cove #1)(68)

Levi was in a driving zone, watching the road, his hand on the gear stick, shifting into lower gears as needed. There were no streetlights out here, because the original town planners wanted the Tahoe night sky to shine bright.

And that it did.

It was no longer snowing, which always meant the temperature dropped even more. The roads had iced up, making her more than a little relieved to not be the one driving. The sky was a black velvet blanket upon which countless millions of stars glittered like diamonds. Having been all over the world, she could honestly say she’d never seen a sky so gorgeous as the one above Lake Tahoe.

Tonight . . . tonight had been a lot for her, though it’d gone better than she could have imagined. She honestly hadn’t been sure she could actually knock on her grandpa’s door and face him. But then Levi had shown up and soothed a place deep inside her where she kept her vulnerability and fear hidden from the rest of the world. With one easy smile, he’d made her feel like she could do anything.

And she’d faced her past.

“Thanks for tonight,” she said quietly.

Without taking his eyes off the road, he reached for her hand, bringing it up to his mouth to brush a kiss to her palm. “After that night on the gondola and all we went through, I’d probably do anything for you, Jane.”

As far as confessions went, that seemed like a doozy, at least according to the way her heart kicked it into gear. And he didn’t seem to have any regrets about saying it either. She took in his profile by the ambient light of the dashboard. He had a few days’ scruff on him that she loved. It went with his wavy hair that never quite behaved, and she loved that too. He was unapologetically himself, not to mention strong and steady, and . . . hot as hell.

“See something you like?” he teased and nipped at the palm he still had hold of.

Her insides quivered. Some outside parts quivered too. “Yes.”

Clearly surprised at her response, he met her gaze briefly, then turned back to the road. “Good, because I can hardly take my eyes off you.”

The words were more of a promise than an admission, and something deep inside her shifted and clicked into place. For years she’d let herself be tossed around in the wind like a wild tumbleweed. And yet suddenly she felt anchored for the first time in . . . maybe forever. “Levi?”

He glanced over again.

“I’m not ready to go home,” she said softly.

This got her another, slightly longer look. “Where should we go?”

We. She closed her eyes a beat. That’s what she got from Levi. Unconditional support. Total acceptance. “Anywhere quiet.”

“Trust me?” he asked.

He’d asked her that very same thing not too long ago, and she’d said no. But at some point over the past few weeks, her answer had changed. “I do.”

He turned on the next road and suddenly they were going up a hill. And up.

And up.

Fifteen minutes later, they’d left all signs of Sunrise Cove behind and were on what was surely normally a dirt road but was currently covered with snow. Levi’s four-wheel drive easily handled the road, and though she could see nothing past the midnight-black night and the dark outline of trees, he clearly knew exactly where he was going.

Finally he took a hairpin curve and stopped the truck.

She took in the view and gasped.

Above, a half-moon hung in the sky, streaked with fingerlike clouds, all of it surrounded by shimmering, twinkling stars, more than she’d ever seen in her life. With no city lights to mask anything, they had a clear view for as far as the eye could see. Far below lay the dark outline of Lake Tahoe, which she’d never seen from this angle, hundreds of feet up. “It’s like we’re on top of the world,” she whispered.

“We are. We’re up on the Tahoe Rim Trail. At 9,500 feet.”

“Wow.” She stared out at the night, enthralled and awed. “I don’t even have words.”

“Same.”

She turned to find him with a forearm braced on the wheel, his other hand on her headrest, watching her. Thoughts hidden. She sensed a careful restraint, a rare hesitation.

She felt neither of those things. Around him, she’d never been able to control her emotions. Now was no exception, but he’d never seemed to have that problem, always steady, calm, in full control.

What would it take to make him lose that control? And why did she want to see it so badly . . . right now?

As if he could read her mind, he let out a rough laugh, the sound scraping at all her good parts. He’d come through for her tonight, giving her what she’d asked for, no questions. No pressure. No sense of impatience.

She’d asked for somewhere quiet. In the moment, she’d meant for somewhere to just be and think. She hadn’t been ready to go home and call it a night, but her wants had changed. She wanted to climb over the console, straddle him, and have her merry way with him.

“I smell something burning,” he murmured.

She let out a quiet laugh because yeah, she was definitely thinking too hard. “It’s just that what I want seems . . . a little forward.”

His eyes darkened. “You have my full attention.”

With a nervous laugh, she pulled out her phone. “So . . . I found another questionnaire.”

He groaned. “Not where I thought you were going with this.” His hand, the one on the headrest of her seat, slipped to the nape of her neck, making thinking difficult. “Thought maybe we were past the quick tricks of the getting-to-know-you stage.”