Mystic Cowboy(93)

Make it up to her? Without a ring? She shook her head. She didn’t want his ring. Rings were just things. She didn’t want things. She wanted him. “And?” she said, trying to bitch her way through this, because this wasn’t what she’d expected. He wasn’t groveling, and he wasn’t begging, and he wasn’t telling her that she was making the biggest mistake of her life. He was being his regular old self.

Not dreaming, she realized. If she were dreaming, they’d be naked in a river.

His smile was cautious. “You don’t wear jewelry. So I had to get something better.” And he handed her the paper.

This made no sense, none whatsoever. She was looking at a flyer that had a trailer—scratch that, a modular home, the flyer said—on it, with a happy family sitting on a porch. At the top, a small square of paper was stapled to the flyer. “What is this?” Even as the words left her mouth, she realized what the small square was. It was a receipt. For nine thousand dollars.

“A house.”

“You bought a house?” All she could do was stare at him.

And he was grinning away at her. “I bought you a house. With a porch.”

“You bought me a house?”

“Actually, I bought us a home.”

Us. Home. That was all she heard. Us. Home.

“I’ve been thinking about it,” he went on, again ignoring her carp-mouthed silence. “I’ve been thinking that a man could get used to indoor plumbing and coffee that makes itself. A man could get used to soft mattresses and warm blankets.”

He was going to stay. It wasn’t even January, and he was going to stay. That lurching thing was going to knock her to her knees.

“And I’ve been thinking. A porch—that’s like being outside, only with one wall. Hell, give a man a comfortable chair and a porch is even better.”

“A home?” Excellent. She was squeaking.

“We could still go camping when it’s nice.” He closed the distance between them with one step and pried her hands loose from the flyer. She hadn’t even realized she’d been crushing it against her chest. “Besides, I think your pipes are going to freeze this winter.”

“Home?” Oh, this just got better. She was down to one word.

He set the flyer down on the recliner, and then his hands were around her waist. “I made a down payment, but they said we could come back and pick out a different model, if you wanted. It doesn’t matter to me, just as long as it’s got a porch.” He touched his forehead to hers and tilted her head back. “Just as long as it’s got you.”

He was going to kiss her. He’d worked alongside her to fight the campy, he’d brought her home and cleaned her up, he’d apologized, he’d made a down payment on a modular house and now he was going to kiss her.

She put her hands on his chest and shoved him back, just enough that his lips didn’t touch hers. Because she knew that as soon as he kissed her the deal would be sealed. He let her push him back, but his hands stayed firmly anchored around her waist.

“You’re going to give up camping?”

His grin got wolfish. “You’re doing it again.”

She would not let him sidetrack her with all that talk of wants and needs—even if he was right. “I don’t care. You’re going to give up camping?”

He nodded, waiting patiently.

Her wheels began to spin. Apologies and homes were all very nice, but she was going to make sure they both read the fine print before they signed on the dotted line. “If you buy us a home, you have to get used to being certain places at certain times.”

He tilted his head. She couldn’t tell if he was amused or irritated. “Understood. You’ll have to get used to having a sweat lodge in the back yard.”

Like she even knew what a sweat lodge looked like. And who the hell had yards around here? “You’ll have to get used to Mellie coming out to visit,” she fired back.

The grin got more wolfish. If only he had a longer nose, she thought. “You’ll have to get used to people dropping by looking for a medicine man.”

She managed to keep the oh, yeah? to herself, but the rest of her thoughts devolved into a juvenile he-said, she-said kind of argument, which wasn’t exactly bitchy but still wasn’t giving in.

“You’ll have to get used to going to Columbus.” Rebel Runs Fast in the Mitchell Mansion—she’d bet cold, hard cash that Aunt Matilda would drive herself down from Cleveland to see that sight. The thought got her dangerously close to a smile.

He ran a thumb over that almost smile, and her bitch resolve wavered even more. “You’ll have to get used to going to New York in the winter.”