Lady Luck (Colorado Mountain #3)(121)
She stared into his eyes and kept whispering when she said, “How did you know?”
He dipped his face even closer, gliding his hand from her neck up into her hair and his arm around her got tight. “My Lexie beams bright and she can do that shit even in her sleep. The Lexie shuffling around this kitchen is doin’ it under a cloud.”
She held his eyes. Then she pressed closer. Then her lips tipped up at the ends.
Then she said, “Okay, honey, I’ll turn on the light.”
He felt his lips tip up at the ends too before he replied, “Okay.”
She got up on her toes and kissed his throat. He closed his eyes when he felt her lips and the brush of her soft hair on his jaw. Then he opened them when she dropped back to her feet.
When he had her gaze again, he reminded her, “We got busy and you didn’t get your take last night. Lotta shit goin’ down and I’m skippin’ my workout tonight to come straight home and take you to the Dodge dealership outside Gnaw Bone before we gotta be home to get ready to take Julius and Anana to The Rooster.”
He brows drew together. “The Dodge –?”
“Gettin’ you another Charger.”
Light dawned then right on its heels denial started. “Ty –”
He shook his head and his fingers in her hair fisted and tugged gently. “Gettin’ you another Charger.”
“But… I don’t… you can’t…” she paused then finished, “the money.”
“The angle Tate’s workin’ doesn’t cost a f**kload of cash to grease the palms of scumbags who won’t do something for nothing. You need a car that I can trust, the Snake would do in the summer, a Charger’s better for the winter. You loved that car. What I did meant you lost it. I got the cash, you’re gettin’ another one.” He paused then finished, “Tonight.”
“But –”
He cut her off. “And, this weekend, f**k me, we’re goin’ shoppin’ for a coffee table.”
She blinked. Then tried again, “But –”
“And I gotta send more money to Ella to get your shit back.”
“My shit is at Dominic and Daniel’s. They have an old ranch house with a barn so they could store it for me. They were waiting for me to settle somewhere so they could send it to me.”
Well, thank f**k. One problem that wouldn’t cost a f**king fortune or take weeks.
“Good. I’ll talk to the boys, get your shit home.”
She grinned. Then she told him, “We don’t need a coffee table.”
“You said last night we do,” he reminded her.
She pressed closer. “Ty, honey,” she said softly, “I get what you’re trying to do but it’s going to be okay, I’m going to be okay. You don’t have to give me my every heart’s desire to prove to me you love me.”
“Mama, every other time I wanna turn on the f**kin’ TV, gotta first locate the remotes and this usually involves diggin’ them outta the cushions. That shit’s a pain in the ass. Last week, got up and kicked over a nearly full beer I put on the floor. That shit’s also a pain in the ass. We need a f**kin’ coffee table.”
She giggled, he heard it, saw it, felt it and liked it.
Then she said, “All right, baby, we’ll buy a coffee table.” Pause then, “And a rug.”
Pushing it.
Whatever.
“And a rug,” he agreed.
She smiled at him.
He brought them back to the matter at hand. “So, what I was sayin’, we gotta get you your ride, we gotta take Julius and Anana out so we can pay them back for causin’ you fear, heartbreak and the need to make a mad dash across the United States in order to watch me die but you also gotta be briefed. I don’t know what you got planned today but I want you in town, at the garage, twelve thirty, we’ll go to lunch at the diner and I’ll fill you in.”
“I’m going to be unpacking, cleaning the house and finding out if Dominic replaced me,” she informed him then smiled again. “So lunch with my husband fits right in.”
His arm gave her another squeeze and he smiled back.
Then she asked, “Did Dominic replace me? He hadn’t when I talked to him a couple of weeks ago but –”
“Mama, I’m not hip on the goings-on at the local salon. Think, to be a Steel Magnolia, you gotta have a pu**y.”
After he said that, his wife burst out laughing, so hard, she couldn’t hold her head up, she dropped it to his chest, her hands clenched in fists in his tee and her shoulders shook with it. And as he listened to and felt her humor, he wondered why he didn’t give her more of it.
He had to make up for that too.
Then her head shot back and, still laughing, she informed him, “I’m not sure there’s an official Steel Magnolia’s rulebook but I think you’re right, that particular requirement goes without saying.”
He grinned at her.
Then he changed the subject to another important one he had to touch on before he went to work and as he did it, his fist slid out of her hair and his arm moved down to wrap around her shoulders.
“All right, Lex, you got a busy schedule but take some time, call Bess and talk to her about drivin’ out here. She wants to put Dallas in her past; we got an extra room while she gives Colorado a try.”