She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. Unless it was everything. And if she didn’t go for it, she would never know. “Or we could not pack.”
He looked over, his expression broadcasting his confusion. “You don’t want to pack?”
“I don’t want to go back to Weldon.” She let her arms fall away from him, and knitted her hands in her lap. Never before had she felt such a need to be brave. “Not yet.”
“You want to stay here?” he asked after a short, cautious pause.
She nodded, treading carefully, too. “I’m thinking, it’s been ten years. I deserve a true vacation. It would be my first.”
Another pause. “And you want to take it here?”
“I do.” Deep breath, deep breath. “But it would be nice not to take it alone.”
“Me?” It was all he asked, his voice soft, his tone wary as if he were walking a razor’s edge of hope.
Hope she could give him. “Of course you. Who else?”
“I don’t know.” He stretched, but the tension remained, radiating toward her. “I thought maybe your mother.”
Now, that was funny. “I love my mother. I would never have gotten through the last ten years without her. But I’ve seen her every day of them. And if I were to take a vacation with her, it would be a cruise, or to a spa. She and I and isolation wouldn’t mix.”
“But you like being isolated with me.”
“I love being isolated with you. And before you run away scared because I used the L word—”
He turned toward her, his eyes flashing, hot and proud and suddenly supremely confident. “Use it again.”
Gulp. “What?”
“Use it again,” he demanded, pressing, intense. Potent as he growled. “Or else I’m going to.”
Oh my. Oh my. This was real. She could barely find her voice. “Then you go first.”
“I love you, Jamie,” he said, cupping her nape and threading his fingers through her hair. “I know it’s been less than a week. I know this has been a wild trial by fire. But I would love you if I’d brought my kid into your clinic for an appointment and met you there.”
“You have a kid?” she asked, a question as crazy as what was happening here.
“Not yet. That would be getting ahead of ourselves, don’t you think?” he asked, one wicked brow rising. “Unless I’m reading you wrong.”
She shook her head, shook it again, kept shaking it until the words and the tears shook free, and her hair began to tumble. “You’re not. I love you Kell. It’s been fast and furious. A whirlwind. But it would’ve been just the same if we hadn’t spent our first week together catching a killer.”
“It’ll be the only week we spend doing anything like that,” he promised, hefting her up to straddle his thighs.
She looped her arms around his neck, her vision blurred, her heart a swollen mess of emotions. “So we can stay here for a while?”
“What about your job?” he asked.
As if she cared. The only thing she cared about was this. Him. Her Texas Ranger. Her Kell. “Six years of accrued vacation, remember? And then I may just take leave. Or quit.”
Half-moon dimples appeared beneath the scruff covering his face. “All these life changes. Maybe you’d also consider moving? Somewhere not too far from your mother?”
“My mother would have no trouble sending me packing if she knew I was happy.”
This time his gaze softened, grew dreamy, and just a little bit damp. “Are you happy, Jamie?”
“Exquisitely,” she told him before he brought her mouth to his and kissed her with all he had. How could she be anything but in the arms of her one good man?