Just To Be With You (The Sullivans #12)(70)

Tatiana was so attuned to Ian’s moods that she felt his tension beside her without needing to look at his face. She knew he couldn’t afford too many hours or days away from the office, yet it didn’t seem as though he wanted the storm to end any more than she did.

The man shook his head as he dropped their groceries into a canvas bag. “Probably just wishful thinking, though. Not too many people out today, apart from you two. Not too many tourists this time of year, either. You see the lighthouse?”

“We did,” Tatiana said with a smile. “It’s beautiful.”

The man’s hand stilled on the package of ground beef he was scanning to take a closer look at her. “You remind me of someone.”

“I get that a lot.” Normally, she would have been happy to sign an autograph, but today she simply paid and took her groceries so that she wouldn’t lose one more second with Ian.

Especially if the storm was going to break soon.

* * *

After checking in with Linda and David at the B&B and confirming that they would be grounded until the following day at least, when they got back to the barn, Ian surprised her by offering to make the meatloaf. While he cooked, she sat cross-legged on the floor in front of the wicker basket of CDs and combed through the huge number of old movies. There were some great ones, some bad ones, and some she’d never seen.

She picked one of each for Ian to choose from. “Back to the Future. Total Recall. Or Wayne’s World?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Wayne’s World.”

“I’ve never seen it.” But she’d always meant to see what Mike Myers had done before Austin Powers and Shrek. “Is it good?”

“It’s a classic,” he said with a grin, and her heart flopped over in her chest at seeing him look so carefree and so happy. “It doesn’t have to be good.”

How many other people had seen Ian like this? Scruffy, cooking, grinning, wearing jeans and a T-shirt while choosing bad movies for them to watch.

She reached up to touch the lighthouse on her necklace. They were all such simple things. And yet, each one of them meant so much to her.

She put out the cheese and crackers and sliced apples onto a plate while he finished getting the meatloaf ready to go into the oven. After washing his hands, Ian came over to the couch, where she was already curled up under a blanket and the opening credits of the movie had begun.

It felt so good, so easy, so right, when he wrapped his arms around her and she tucked her head against his chest while they watched. The story was simple, about a small-town rock band, the funny guy getting the pretty girl, and good triumphing over evil. And, much to her delight, it turned out that Ian knew all the words from when he was a teenager, especially the part where they went into a long string of “she’s a babe” jokes.

Her stomach growled just as the timer on the oven dinged. Putting the movie on pause, they headed back into the kitchen to eat their simple meal. She’d found a candle and matches on a shelf and placed it, lit, in the center of the small pine table.

“Have you ever thought about being in a movie like that?”

“Casting directors have always seen me more as the dramatic type.”

“You’re great in the dramas,” he said, “but you’d be great in a comedy, too.”

“You really think I could be the slinky guitar-playing heroine?” She vamped a line from the movie, putting on her best sexy attitude.

He blinked, clearly stunned for a minute. “Wow, that was good. So, yeah, you could totally play that part. Though I was thinking more about you killing it as the goofy lead singer with the cable show in the basement.”

She laughed, barely covering her mouthful of meatloaf in time. “You know,” she said a few moments later, “now that you mention it, it would be fun to do a comedy. Although I have a feeling that if I’m going to get one, I’ll have to show those casting directors a thing or two they don’t expect.”

“If anyone can do it, it’s you, Tatiana. You’re extraordinarily good at what you do.”

“Thank you.” She suddenly felt shy. “So are you. Actually, I wanted to ask you something.”

“Of course you do,” he teased her.

For a moment, she hesitated. Neither of them wanted to let the real world intrude on their day any more than it already had in the grocery store, but now that they’d spoken about her career, she had another question for him about his. And since it hadn’t felt weird to bring up her job in the midst of having fun, she hoped it wouldn’t be strange to talk about his, either.

“When Flynn was walking you through his new idea, he talked to you like you were a tech guy, rather than just some guy in a suit.”

“I drive my tech guys crazy,” he admitted with a cute smile. “They’re always telling me to stop breaking their toys.”

“Actually,” she said in a teasing voice as they took their empty plates over to the sink, “I could see you as the geeky guy down in the basement downing Red Bull and pulling a pen out of his pocket protector.”

Laughing, he tugged her back under the blanket on the couch to finish watching the movie. But Tatiana was listening so carefully to every beat of his heart as she lay against his chest that she barely heard another word of dialogue in the film.

She didn’t know who started kissing whom first, but it didn’t matter this time. All that mattered was that it was so good, so sweet. Being with Ian was everything she’d ever wanted, everything she’d ever dreamed of. Soon, they had each other’s clothes off, and she was lying naked on the couch with his wonderfully heavy weight pressing her deeper into the cushions.