“I’ll like the way you kiss,” he whispered back.

“What if you don’t?”

“You’re the smartest woman I know, baby, you’ll learn to give me what I like.”

That was an excellent answer.

“What if you don’t like the way I do other things?” I pressed.

“I will.”

“Ja—”

“You’ll learn, and just sayin’, honey, so will I. That’s the way it goes.”

Not in my experience.

“This is an important part of us takin’ it slow,” he carried on. “Said it before, I’ll promise it now, Emme, we’ll go at your speed. But I want us finally to go where what we got has always been leading.”

“Do you really think so?” I asked.

“Babe, would we be having this conversation if I didn’t?”

We wouldn’t. Absolutely.

I opened my eyes, sat up and admitted, “I’m a psycho.”

“You care about me, have for a while, don’t want to lose me. That’s not psycho, Emme. That’s real. And it’s smart. And it means a great deal to me. What you need to get from all I’m sayin’ is, because it means that much to me, I’m gonna handle this with care. You just gotta believe in me.”

“Do you believe in me?” I asked and got nothing so I felt my heart squeeze.

Then I got something.

And it was huge.

“Emme, what you’re worried about, I get. I like it. It’s sweet. It’s you. But outside of us makin’ our way in that, discovering that part of the relationship we’re gonna have, nothin’ else about you makes me think for even a second I don’t believe in what I could have with you. That’s somethin’ else you gotta get. I missed it. For years. There are three people in this world I trust with everything about me: my father, Chace and you. And I finally figured out I don’t give you that because you’re my girl but because you’ve always in a way been my girl. I felt it again last night. You feel it too. You just gotta admit it then we’ll sort the rest out.”

It was my turn to say nothing.

“Emme, baby, talk to me.”

“I want this,” I whispered.

And I did. Badly. And I might have done for a very, very long time. I just wouldn’t let myself think about it when he was with my friend and definitely not after I lost him.

“Good. You got it. Starting Sunday,” he replied immediately.

“There’s things to know about me,” I admitted.

“You’ll tell me and you’ll do that at your pace too.”

God, he was so nice.

“Okay,” I agreed.

“You gonna sleep now?” he asked.

No way.

“Yeah,” I answered.

“Bullshit,” he muttered, a smile in his voice.

“Uh, reminder, Jacob, it’s just over twenty-four hours since we met in town and things have progressed at light speed. Since I’m the first human being in history to travel at that speed, I think it’s okay that I allow myself a moment to process the feeling.”

“I get you but I don’t want you losing sleep over this.”

So nice!

“Not sure you can do anything about that,” I told him. “But I’ll be okay.”

“Faye’s having a boy,” he announced, and I blinked.

Then I asked, “Pardon?”

“You in bed?” he asked back.

“Yeah, kinda. Sitting on it.”

“Get under the covers, Emme.”

His deep voice saying that started that pulse beating in that awesome place and I did what I was told.

“Light out,” he ordered.

I did that too.

“You in?” he asked.

“Yeah, but—”

“They’re namin’ him after me.”

“Oh God!” I cried. “That’s so sweet.”

“Yeah,” he replied.

And that was when Jacob talked to me about a lot of things, none of them taxing, none of them earth shattering, all of them how we always used to be except sweeter, and he did it for a long time. He did it until he heard my voice get sleepy.

Then he said softly, “Gonna let you go now, baby.”

“Okay, honey.”

“Sleep good.”

“You too.”

“ ’Night, Emme.”

“ ’Night, Jacob.”

I disconnected, put my phone to the nightstand and stared at it in the dark for three seconds.

Then my eyes closed and I fell asleep.

* * *

Twelve hours, seven minutes later…

I hit Jacob’s contact button and hit go.

It rang once.

“You okay?”

Feeling weird when I called him, at his question, I felt weird no more and laughed.

“Yeah, honey. Just that, you’re bringing boys over, I need to know how many and what they want to eat.”

“Manual labor. Beer, chips and brownies.”

“I was thinking more along the line of homemade burritos.”

“You’d be thinkin’ wrong ’cause, one, you lucked out on the Shake ’n Bake, but it’ll be important to keep those boys fed, and your stove gives up the ghost, I’m not gonna wanna take a break to try to fix it or go out and buy a camp stove.”

I started laughing softly again and Jacob kept going.

“Two, they need to expend their energies rippin’ out insulation, haulin’ it down, luggin’ new up and staple-gunning it to beams. Food that requires silverware is an unnecessary expenditure of that energy.”

“Got ’cha,” I murmured. “Beer and munchies.”

“Right. And now that I got you, insulation is ordered. Delivery window is one to four tomorrow. That good for you?”

I blinked at my desk. “You ordered it?”

“Yeah.”

“Already?”

“Babe, need it Sunday. No time to f**k around.”

“But you didn’t measure,” I reminded him.

“You gave me a tour, didn’t you?”

I sat up straight as it hit me, like it sometimes did, how very sharp he was. I knew without a doubt he’d ordered enough, not too much. And he calculated the amount of insulation I’d need by walking through my house.

“Yeah, I did,” I answered. “And I’ll be there for delivery during the window.”

“Good,” he replied then asked the question I’d hoped he wouldn’t ask, “McFarland being cool with you?”

He was. And, in Dane’s way, he also was not. And I figured Jacob wouldn’t see the part where he was, only the part where he wasn’t.

I had to answer so I decided it was safe to share some of it, but not all of it.

“He came up to the office and asked if we could talk. I told him to come by the house at one on Sunday and I’d say what I had to say then.”

“And?” Jacob prompted.

“And, well…”

Crap!

I didn’t know whether to tell him or not.

Because I was psycho, I told him, “Then he asked who owned the black Dodge Ram that was outside my house last night.”

Silence.

I shouldn’t have told him.

“Ja—”

“He was at your house last night?”

I’d never heard him use that deep, rumbly, controlled-but-barely tone of voice and I wished I’d still never heard it because it was more than a little scary.

“He, well… does that sometimes when he’s, well, we’re not… when we don’t have plans,” I stammered. “He does it because I live up there alone and he wants to check on me. Make sure I’m good.”

“He does it because he’s creepy into you, Emme.”

I was getting the feeling that might be true so I said nothing.

“We need to get around to having a conversation about this guy, babe,” Jacob told me.

“It’ll be over Sunday, honey,” I told him.

“Yeah, but evidence is suggesting he’s not gonna like that and he’s also not gonna like you movin’ on, and you work with him. So we’re gonna have a conversation about him and soon. What’d you say about my truck?”

“I told him you were over.”

More silence then, “Straight up?”

“Well, I didn’t share about your earth-shattering shift in the path of our relationship but, yeah. I said you came around for dinner. Why?”

“And how’d he react to that?”

“He’s always been weird about me with guys,” I admitted.

“Creepy. Fuck,” Jacob murmured.

“He gets over it,” I told him.

“No he doesn’t, Emme. He hides it. And Sunday, after the boys go, we have that conversation. Yeah?”

“Okay,” I mumbled.

“I also want you spending the night at my house tonight and tomorrow night.”

My entire body spasmed.

“Pardon?” I breathed.