“What I’m sayin’, Faye, is, you’re avoiding my eyes because maybe you’re embarrassed or feelin’ shy and uncertain about what to do next.”

His hand came up, shifted my hair off my shoulder then curled around the side of my neck. But his eyes never left mine throughout this or when he used his finger hooked into my belt buckle to pull me even closer and his face dipped to mine.

“I like you,” he whispered. “I hope you’re gettin’ that. I like all I know about you even what I already knew that you were gonna tell me earlier. That bein’ that no one’s been in there. That is, no one now but me. And last, I like knowin’ the town’s cute, sweet, pretty, shy librarian who I’m datin’ wears sexy underwear.” His smile hit his eyes which were all I could see and he went on, “I like it a lot, baby. A f**kuva lot. So you got not one thing to be embarrassed, shy or uncertain about. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” I whispered, giving him a small, relieved smile because I was relieved and not in a small way.

“Good,” he whispered back, lifted his chin, kissed my nose then let go of me in the two places he had hold of me but grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the room.

Seeing as my eyes were closed since he was kissing me and carrying me on the way to his room, on the way out of it, I could finally take in his house.

Which, as he moved me through it, was really nice. It was an extension of him. Masculine (very), good taste and western.

It was also massive. We kept going (and going and going!) and then finally hit an enormous room that was both family room and kitchen. They were enormous in their own right but put together they were massive. Not to mention his sectional which was the like I’d never seen before. It was, essentially, three full couches. Three.

I figured Misty lived here with him but I didn’t figure he lounged on his couch with her watching TV, mostly because he told me he spent zero time with her if he could help it. This meant that couch had been a couch for one. Which was crazy.

“Uh… you have a lot of room,” I noted as he led me to the kitchen.

“Yep,” he agreed.

“This is a lot of room for just one person,” I remarked as he stopped me by an island that could act as a guest bed for three adolescent children. Just pump up an air mattress, toss it on top and hope they didn’t roll off.

He didn’t reply to my remark.

Instead, he asked, “You drink red or white wine with tacos?”

I looked to him to see he was standing at his fridge. “Tacos?”

“Ground beef, packet seasoning, store bought shit to put on top. I’m not a cook. Don’t like doin’ it. But gotta eat and when I eat, I like to eat shit I like. If it comes out of a packet, so be it. They might not be Rosalinda’s or even close. But they don’t suck. So, we’re havin’ tacos.”

“I like tacos,” I informed him though I liked Rosalinda’s Mexican food better. You had to drive to Chantelle to get it, but Chantelle wasn’t very far and Rosalinda’s was so good, it was worth the trip. When I didn’t drive to Chantelle but I had a taste for tacos, I used the packet stuff too. So I decided to inform Chace of this fact. “I also make packet tacos, FYI.”

“Good to know,” he muttered, his lips tipped up then, “Red or white?”

“Red.”

He moved to a bottle of wine sitting on his counter.

I moved to a stool, pulled it out and hefted my booty on it.

“Room to grow.”

This was Chace. I stared at his back at his weird comment that came out of nowhere as he shifted to the side to open a drawer and pull out a corkscrew.

“Pardon?”

He nabbed the bottle, turned to me and his eyes locked on mine in a way I forgot how to breathe.

“Room to grow,” he repeated then explained. “Another thing that sucked about life when my future included Misty. Didn’t think I’d have what I wanted and what I wanted was why I got this place. I bought this house to put a woman in it then plant a family in it. So it’s big because I want three kids. Room to grow.”

Holy.

Frak.

“Room to grow,” I whispered breathily, unable to tear my eyes from his.

“Yep,” he answered firmly then asked. “You want kids?”

“Uh… yeah.” I was still whispering and it was still breathily.

“How many?” he went on.

“Three.”

Yep, still whispering. Yep, still breathy. Also, incidentally, it was the truth.

Chace smiled.

I quit breathing.

I forced my eyes from his and took in the bottle of wine.

Then I asked, “Didn’t you get champagne?”

“Fuck,” he muttered and my gaze went back to him. “Forgot.”

I was disappointed and tried to hide it but I still enquired, “You forgot the champagne?”

“No,” he answered, putting the bottle of red back on the counter. “You leadin’ the night tellin’ me you had a clean pair of panties in your purse, I forgot that I bought champagne at all.”

I bit my lip even though I got a little happy niggle that I was able to make him forget anything.

He grinned and I had a feeling, the way he did it, that he read my mind.

I had no time to react to this because he walked down a back hall and disappeared.

He came back with two trumpet shaped champagne flutes that had cute teeny, tiny little horseshoes etched around the bottom just above the stem. I didn’t know how but they managed to be classy and cool rather than looking kitschy like some of that kind of thing could look. Perhaps it was the etchings which were precise, almost elegant and not cartoony. Perhaps it was the quality of the crystal that was so clean and fine it showed prisms in his overhead lights. Whatever it was, they were awesome.

Chace set them on the island by me, his manner like they were no better than plastic and headed back to the fridge as I offered, “Anything I can do to help?”

He turned with the bottle of champagne, the fridge closing behind him and had his mouth open to speak when we both heard a knock on the door.

His eyes went in the direction of the front door. They were narrowed under drawn brows and his jaw had gone hard. It was kind of a scary look. But my eyes dropped to his shirt, which was untucked, the three buttons I’d unbuttoned were still unbuttoned and I saw a sprinkling of reddish brown chest hair. Not a thick, matte of hair but a short, sexy sprinkling.

By sexy I actually meant unbelievably fraking sexy.