“This is fucking amazing.”
“You think so?”
I pull her down so she’s straddling my lap. “Hell yes. So far beyond the other food, it’s insane.”
She’s blushing again, not meeting my eyes. “I didn’t make all this by myself. You’ve got a great staff in there. They know what they’re doing, but all they needed was some guidance.”
“So Martin?”
She smiles. “He wasn’t there, but I think he’d be willing to learn. It takes a lot to run a kitchen if you’re not ready for it.”
I reach for a roll from the basket on the table and dip it in the little ramekin of jam beside it. When I bite into it, I moan. The bread melts in my mouth and the apricot sweetness is sharp enough to ride the perfect line of ecstasy.
“You’ve tried these?”
She laughs. “I hadn’t, actually.”
I dip the roll again, and she takes a bite. A little bit of jam is still on my fingers when I finish the roll in one bite, and Rachel surprises the hell out of me when she grabs my wrist, sucking the jam from my fingers. “I’m a sucker for jam,” she says softly.
“Oh really?”
Dipping my finger in the pot of jam, I run it along her neck and lick it off. Rachel whimpers, hips moving against mine. There are distant sounds from the kitchen, but I don’t care. I open up the first few buttons of her shirt, letting the fabric part to expose her bra. I pull her tit up out of the bra cup and I smear the jam there too. I lick it off her nipple, savoring the flavor on her. Once clean, I tuck her breast back in and pull back. “Tell me how much you love it,” I say. “How much you love it when I lick this jam from your nipples.”
Her words stutter. “I-I love it. I love you.” Immediately she goes stone still. “Jam, I meant. I love jam.”
Rachel’s face is flaming red, and there’s a look of mortification on her face. She’s not meeting my eyes. That’s unacceptable. Especially after saying that. I weave my non-sticky hand into her hair and guide her gaze to mine. “Did you say you loved me?”
Misery is clear in her eyes, but she nods. “Yes.”
“And that upsets you?”
“No,” she gasps. “I just—”
“Don’t you dare regret it,” I tell her in a low voice. “Don’t you fucking be embarrassed about those words.”
She closes her eyes. “It doesn’t make sense. It’s too soon.”
I kiss her hard, still tasting the sweetness of jam on her tongue. “It wasn’t fucking soon enough, Rachel. I should have said it first. I don’t care if it hasn’t been long.” Pressing my lips to her ear in the way I know makes her shiver, I speak the truest thing that I’ve ever said in my life. “I am so fucking in love with you, Rachel Dover. I don’t ever want you not to be here with me, in my life and in my bed. I want you to be my wife, because you’re already my everything.”
There are tears in her eyes when I kiss her again. “Yes,” she breathes. “I want that. I’m your wife. I’m your chef.”
We both laugh, and it’s swallowed by our kisses. But somewhere in-between tangling tongues and battling lips she finds the words, “I love you too.”12RachelI have no idea what time it is. Sometime in the middle of the night. I’m lying exhausted and sweating with my husband, who I love.
I love him.
The words are a revelation and yet they make perfect sense.
Clayton’s head rests on my stomach, and I’m stroking my fingers through his gorgeous hair. “Mmm,” he says. “Don’t stop that.”
Now that I know that I’m going to be here, there are questions that I want to ask. Things that I need to face. “Will you tell me about Evelyn?” I ask. My voice sounds thin, but it’s all I’ve got.
He strokes a comforting hand up my ribs. “You would have liked her,” he says gently. “No nonsense, sharp as a tack. Some people mistook that for her being cold, but she wasn’t. She saved her warmth for the people that she truly cared about because she’d been burned before. But even without a lot of warmth, she was totally respected and loved. She created this place, turned it into the community that it is now.”
“I wish I could have met her.”
Clayton sighs. “I wish that too. She took me in when I came here looking for work, already on my own and too fucking young to get any real job. I didn’t understand why she took me under her wing until later, but she gave me everything. Made sure that I finished school and taught me everything about ranch life.”
“Why did she take you in?”
Slowly, he raises himself so that he can look at me, and there’s kindness in his gaze. “Because she lost her family. She never talked about it, but I always suspected that her husband was abusive. He’d died before I came, but there were signs. And then her son…he’d cut her off. From the little she would share with me, the son had turned out a lot like the father, and it was painful for her. I think she saw in me an opportunity to get back a little of what she lost. And she gave me the family that I needed, too.”