The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil #2)(74)

And then they had his official first date, nearly two weeks into them being together.

In other words . . .

The Toby and Addie way.



“It’s snowing,” Addie whispered.

She was tucked up to his side, and he was trying to ignore the fact she wasn’t in a seatbelt, as he drove carefully home with Dapper Dan sitting where Addie should be, his nose snuffling the cold wind coming through the crack she’d put in the window.

“Yeah,” he whispered back, not knowing why he was whispering, it was just something about her mood that was blanketing the car that made it seem like that was the thing to do.

She said nothing more as he navigated the winding roads with the detached condos in his development to his place at the very end, glad to be home for a number of reasons, but relieved to be there so he wasn’t driving with her restrained.

He’d bought his place in July, offering on it a week after Brooks had been kidnapped.

Each of the fifteen condos was private, secluded, with a long drive, and surrounded on three sides with a lot of space filled with forest. Though they all were the same layout, they had different designs in the unusual front doors, different elevations, and some had horizontal wood siding, some vertical, some herringbone and some shingle.

Toby’s was herringbone.

He took the turn up his lane, reaching to his visor to hit his garage door opener.

“Dig your pad. It’s totally boss,” Addie murmured when it came into sight.

“Glad you think so, honey,” Toby murmured back.

He guided them into the garage, shifted into park and shut her down as Addie pulled away.

Dapper Dan had jumped out on Addie’s side by the time Toby reached and grabbed her bag from the passenger floor and knifed out of his.

But when he looked, expecting her to join him at the hood, which was close to the door that took them inside, he saw she was wandering toward the open bay of the garage door.

Taking her cue, Dapper Dan ambled out into the falling snow.

Toby dropped her bag on the hood and switched directions, watching Addie walk out into the snow, stop and tip her head back.

Toby froze, staring at her in her dark green coat over her dress and those sex-on-heels boots with her hair up in an arrangement that practically screamed at a man to take it down, and he didn’t move as he watched her stand in the veiled moonlight and blink up at the snow.

She had some framed pictures of Brooks sitting out at her house. More pictures on her walls, those group frames, most of them with pictures of her and Eliza or her with people he hadn’t met.

There weren’t a lot, Addie wasn’t a taking pictures and framing them person.

She was a living life and remembering it person.

Just like Toby.

But there was one photo that had pride of place in her bedroom in a fancy frame on the dresser.

A big one that had lost some of it’s sharpness due to it being enlarged.

You could still see it was a picture from the back of a blonde woman sitting on a blanket in the night, most of her cloaked in darkness, just a hint of a body, the light material of a sundress.

But the moonlight was lighting her long, blonde hair.

Daphne.

And right then, Addie stood with the moonlight, bright even through the clouds, lighting her hair with the snow falling in her face.

Tobe rested his shoulder against the opened bay and crossed his arms, deciding in that instant that it was time to sort out the shack. The place his grandfather, and his father, and he and Johnny hung at when they left Matlock behind and went fishing, or hauled their ATVs or snowmobiles to in order to cover different terrain or just relax and blow time.

It was his now and he hadn’t been back often seeing as Addie was not at the shack and they had not been at a place he could take her and Brooklyn there.

Now he was.

So he was going to fix up that man retreat and make it something better for her, for Brooklyn, and for Johnny and Iz when they wanted to use it.

Addie could have a lot of moonlight there. And snow. And nature. And quiet.

And him.

And he could give her a nice place to get away from it all and get her Daphne on.

Addie didn’t right her head when she called, “You’re not supposed to be over there.”

“I like the view.”

She righted her head then and looked to him.

“I’m falling in love with you.”

That was so unexpected, his gut actually swung back like her words landed there.

He honest to fuck felt winded.

But it was a velvet blow.

“Well, maybe it’s more honest to share that’s past tense,” she went on.

Jesus fuck.

“Come here,” he growled.

“She’d love you, Tobias. She’d adore you,” she said. “She’d love how you are with Brooklyn and she’d love how you are with me.”

“Adeline, come . . . here.”

She didn’t come there.

“I hate that Izzy has to walk down the aisle with Charlie. Nothing against Charlie. He earned that honor looking out for her all those years before she met Johnny. But I wish Mom was walking her down the aisle. I wish Mom could put her hand in the hand of a Gamble man. Mix moonlight with motor oil.”

Fuck.

Him.

“Baby, come here.”

“It’s selfish, but I wish that because I want it after, if you make me yours in front of God and man and woman and Matlock. I want her hand to put mine in yours, wrap our fingers around and I want to stand with you and her and know she’s down with the hand I’m gonna hold on to for the rest of my life.”