Deacon (Unfinished Hero #4)(50)

But I still believed that working together could be fun. And if not fun, at least it was together and that in itself was good.

I continued to score through the morning with another orgasm Deacon gave me during the shower we took together and earning another grin when I was ready about five minutes after he was whereupon I announced as much.

“You’re ready?” he asked, not hiding the surprise in his voice, leaning a shoulder against the doorway to my bedroom where he was standing.

“Yep,” I replied.

“No makeup?”

Suddenly, I was uncertain if I was ready.

“Do I need makeup?” I asked.

“No.”

That came quick and firm, so I relaxed. “Then I’m ready.”

“Your hair isn’t dry,” Deacon pointed out.

“We aren’t in one hundred percent humidity, Deacon Deacon.” His lips started curving up at my response and I kept at it. “The mountains are arid. It’ll dry in no time.”

“So it dries as beautiful as it is with you doin’ shit to it?”

The warmth only Deacon could give me by being his brand of sweet came back. It felt good. So I just nodded.

That was when I got the grin before he said, “Then let’s go, Cassie.”

All went well from there. Me being back in his Suburban. Deacon swinging into the Mexican Jumping Bean without my even asking. Deacon being relaxed and calm while driving, even when some guy cut him off to take a right turn, this making Deacon brake when he wouldn’t have had to if the guy wasn’t being a jerk.

Now all wasn’t well.

Now I’d had to leave my trolley with my carefully selected trays of flowers and spiky and tailing plants that would so work with my vision of floral beauty at Glacier Lily in the garden center because I had no idea where my man was and the big flat trolley I had was too unwieldy to shove through the store.

Someone was going to snatch my plants, I knew it.

And where could Deacon be? I’d looked through all the aisles in the garden center (three times).

He was just gone.

I’d called his number, but he didn’t answer (as usual).

Hurrying through the humongous store, then going through the back aisles and doing it again, I saw him standing at the far back looking at ladders.

Ladders.

What the heck?

“Dea…Priest,” I called.

He looked to me but said nothing.

I stopped two feet away. “You left me in the garden center,” I informed him of information he well knew.

“Need a ladder,” he replied.

I stared at him, looked to the ladders, then looked to him again. “I have a ladder.”

“Not tall enough,” he stated.

I felt my brows draw together. “For what?”

“Gotta clean your gutters,” he declared. “May have to replace some of ’em. Ladder in your shed won’t reach.”

“I don’t need to clean my gutters. I have evergreens all around my house.”

He turned fully to me. “They drop needles, woman. And you got aspens, some of ’em tall, not to mention those three big birches at the front of your house and the elms close to the river.” I was having difficulty processing Deacon’s knowledge of my trees as he kept talking. “Rain last night was fallin’ over the sides, not goin’ where it’s supposed to go. This means the gutters are probably caked.”

I’d noticed that but it hadn’t occurred to me my gutters needed cleaned, mostly because I liked that fall of rain. Of course, not when it was pouring down, then that heavy fall kind of freaked me out.

I still didn’t think about cleaning my gutters.

Deacon did and this explained him looking at what I thought were the trees last night. But it wasn’t the trees. It was the rain coming over my gutters.

I wasn’t sure how to take this conversation so I decided it was best to feel my way.

“Are you gonna clean my gutters?” I asked.

“Not buyin’ a ladder for my woman to do it.”

Okay, I knew how to take that, as in like it a whole lot.

Now to the tough stuff.

“Did you think of maybe telling me you were going to clean my gutters and needed a ladder to do it before taking off to look at ladders, leaving me talking to myself?” I asked.

“When I took off, you weren’t talkin’.”

I found this hard to believe, though I did have to take a breath so perhaps he’d escaped when I did that.

“Still,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t drive to Wyoming, Cassidy,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t know where you went.” My voice dipped lower. “And I’ll point out, I phoned and you didn’t answer again.”

His reply to that was “Phone’s on the nightstand.”

I blinked.

Who left their phone on the nightstand?

He went on, “Don’t need one when I’m with you.”

There was a lot there, including the clashing feelings of being happy he was again demonstrating he was with me as in with me and wanted that without any distractions and the disturbed feeling that this might mean he didn’t have anyone to talk to, not that he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I didn’t get into that. I stuck with the matter at hand.