Fools (Licking Thicket 3)

“Twenty entire minutes,” he repeated. “While you and Carter were standing over here, getting all teary-eyed.”

“Hey! It was a beautiful ceremony, and my man happens to slay in a cornflower-blue bow tie.” I lifted my hands to his shoulders and patted his tie fondly.

“You know, it’s not too late,” he whispered in my ear.

“Not too late for what?” I said blithely, pretending not to know what he meant.

“Not too late for us to have the big Yes at the Steak ’n Bait. To have the ceremony and the tears and the flowers.” He gestured around the barn, at the decorations that had taken the Beautification Corps the better part of a week. “And the cute little place cards, and the thousands of fairy lights hanging from the rafters, and the candles in jelly jars on the tables. The fiddle players warming up. The poor twigs that were just livin’ their lives until Ava Siegel attacked ’em with a can of spray paint, festooned them with crystals, stuffed ’em in a pitcher, and used them to decorate the gift table. It’s not too late for… the hyphenation.”

“You will recall I specifically chose no hyphenation after giving it ‘thoughtful consideration.’ I do not want us forever known as the Wright-Johnsons, thus implying that there are wrong Johnsons somewhere. And I will not answer to Tuck Johnson-Wright, because you just know someone was gonna say they tuck theirs to the left.”

Dunn snorted. “And that someone was probably going to be me.”

“Precisely. And the other option, where you’d take my name, was ridiculous.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Dunn said slowly. His big body shook with laughter, but his voice came out as a deep, sexy rumble. “I think Dunn Wright is a pretty appropriate name for me, darlin’. Especially after last night.”

He pulled back just far enough to give me a wicked smile.

I shook my head, fighting back my own smile, and trailed my hands down his arms until I could twine our fingers together, then ran my thumb over the black tungsten band I’d placed on him a few days ago in a tiny chapel in Las Vegas.

“We’re Mr. and Dr. Johnson,” I reminded him. I lifted up on my tiptoes and leaned into him, wrapping my arms around his neck and inhaling the leather and cut-grass scent of him, reveling in the knowledge that we belonged to each other in the eyes of the law now, the way we’d belonged to each other in our hearts for years, even if we’d only gotten out of our own way and admitted it a couple of months ago. “That is the only thing I care about.”

After the Entwinin’ and our night at Dunn’s cabin, things had moved at lightning speed… but it hadn’t felt like they’d been going too fast, more like we were making up for lost time. We’d gone directly to Cindy Ann and Red’s the next day to share the news—though Dunn had waited an entire two hours longer to tell Brooks, on account of the hog-tying—and I’d moved the better part of my Milano stash and most of my belongings into the farmhouse the following weekend.

The weekend after that, we’d been cuddled in bed on Sunday morning talking about what to do with my newly empty space in town when our convo had suddenly taken a turn.

“If I want to make the apartment in my house fully separate from my practice downstairs, I’d have to do a ton of construction to block off the staircase, which would be expensive and annoying.” I’d trailed a lazy finger down the center of his chest and around his nipple while his hand traced patterns on my upper arm. “But at the same time, if I’m gonna be staying out here at your place, it’d be bad for my whole upstairs to not be used, right? I should just sell it and move my practice, I guess, but… well, I love that secret hidey-hole. Especially since my boyfriend likes to push me into it when he brings me lunch so he can kiss me silly.”

“I guess it’s your call in the end, since you own the place,” Dunn had said in this weird, stilted way. His hand had stopped stroking my arm.

I’d snorted and lifted my head from his chest to frown at him. “And since when has that stopped you from giving me your honest opinion about anything, or stopped me from taking it? Just the same way we bought a gallon of Elegant Gray for the spare room ’cause I liked it best, even though you wanted navy blue and it’s technically your house and your farm.” I’d flopped back down.

Dunn had hesitated for one second, watching me from the corner of his eye, and then he’d rolled us, fast as lightning, so I was on my back underneath him. “You want my honest opinion, Tuck?”