Miss Moon: Dammit, Preston Michael Shaw, u better not be hurt! If you are, I will kick your ass so badly that u’ll be in traction.
Miss Moon: After I kiss your smug, stubborn face off.
Miss Moon: Ugh, I just need you to be okay. Please. You can call
me baby if you want. You can call me anything.
I saw the signs for the fair first. It took inching around a few more curves past endless buses, vans, trucks, and other moving settlements that were temporarily in one place to get my bearings enough to figure out where I was.
Then I saw her.
She was standing off to the side of the road near the Airstream in the picture she’d sent. If I hadn’t seen her, I wouldn’t have recognized it because there were a few of them in various configurations.
But I could’ve recognized Ryan anywhere. Especially when she was one of the only people out milling about in this particular area, since it was after two am.
I’d gotten really lost those three times, and that was with GPS. Go down one wrong back road and you ended up in a whole other county.
And then if you just kept going, not being sure of the difference between south and not south in the dark in an unfamiliar area…
It was a problem.
She was gesturing wildly with her hands as she talked to a small blond woman. Was that her mother? She looked tiny. Ryan’s exact opposite.
Her mom. Christ. I couldn’t do the first meet and greet with the parental unit in the middle of the night. I wasn’t even wearing a suit.
Ryan had her armor, and I had mine.
I signaled and pulled over to the side of the road a bit back. It was probably mean I didn’t alert her to my arrival right away, but I was entitled after her unexpected disappearing act.
Her dark hair streamed behind her as she paced away then back a couple of times. Her mother stepped up to her and gripped her arms, saying something that made Ryan drop her head back to stare at the sky.
The brief glimpse of wet on her cheeks had me climbing out. Imagined or not, I wouldn’t make her hurt for even a minute more than necessary.
Never.
She turned to face me and her eyes went comically wide as she glimpsed me standing behind the open door of my borrowed SUV.
Then she started to run.
Stepping away from the truck, I caught her as she leaped into my arms, staggering under her weight as we collided into the side of the SUV.
“Shit, if we dent this thing—”
Her mouth was on mine before I could finish. Her tongue slid between my lips and my hands landed on her firm little ass to hold her tight to my instantly interested groin.
“I’m gonna fucking kill you.” Each word was punctuated with a kiss. “Didn’t even need to—dammit, your mouth.”
“Umph.” It was all I could manage as I fought to keep hold of her and simultaneously thrust upward into her soft, unfortunately covered cleft.
A throat was repeatedly cleared nearby.
Neither of us cared.
“So, you must be Preston.”
“I hear a voice,” I muttered as Ryan drew my lower lip between her teeth.
“Ignore her. She’ll go away.”