“Absolutely,” she said. “When?”
“I’m thinking now.”
“Oh, good idea.” Mia was still trembling. Still shaking from needs awakened and screaming inside her. “Where?”
“Your room. Fifteen minutes.”
“Right. Fifteen minutes.” She took a breath and blew it out. “Why so long?”
He laughed and she did, too. This was ridiculous. She was acting crazy. She’d never done anything like this before. It was so out of character for her. And she liked it a lot.
“Because,” he said, letting her go long enough to adjust his jeans, “I’m not going to be able to walk across that yard for at least ten minutes.”
She flushed, then grinned. Wow. She’d never done that to a man before. Had him so hard he wasn’t able to walk. It felt…great.
“Okay, then,” she said, taking another breath, which only succeeded in fanning the flames licking at her insides. “I’ll be waiting.”
His gray eyes burned with an intensity that was new to her as he promised, “I’ll get there as fast as I can.”
Nodding, Mia scuttled out of the barn, waved to the guys in the paddock and hurried toward the house. She stopped at her car long enough to pick up her things, then she practically ran to the ranch house and the staircase that led to her bedroom.
* * *
Mia didn’t have much time. She raced up the stairs, praying she wouldn’t run into Dave’s housekeeper as she went. She hit her bedroom at a dead run and pulled her clothes off as she hurried across the room to the attached bath. She hopped into the shower and thanked heaven she’d shaved her legs the day before. When she was finished, she dried off and slipped into the heavy, white robe hanging on the back of her door, tying the belt with shaking hands.
She was taking a step here. A big one. She hadn’t meant for her relationship with Dave to go this far, but now that it had she wouldn’t regret it. Instead, she was going to grab at the chance fate had handed her. For years, she’d been locked away in schools, libraries, tucked up in her suite of rooms at Alex’s house. Life had been passing her by and she’d hardly noticed.
Mia took a deep breath and slapped one hand to her belly in a futile attempt to quell the butterflies swarming inside. She hadn’t once, in the past few years, had so much as a date. She’d been too focused on her future to enjoy her present.
Well, today that stopped. Today, Mia Hughes was going to take the time to live a little. To be with a man who wanted her. Whatever happened tomorrow, she’d simply have to deal with it, because she wasn’t going to back away.
Mia sat down on the edge of her four-poster bed and, to distract herself from the nerves of waiting, glanced around the room that had become so familiar over the past week. The whole house was golden oak and rough-hewn stone, and her room was no different. There was a deeply cushioned window seat below the arched bay windows that overlooked the backyard. The view was of rolling green grass, stands of live oaks and ponds for the Black Angus cattle that wandered the fields. A stone fireplace, cold now, stood against one wall, and on the opposite wall was a dresser beside a walk-in closet. It was perfect. Just like the rest of this house.
And right now, all it was lacking was Dave.
A knock on her door startled her out of her thoughts. She opened the door, looked up at Dave and knew that somehow this was meant to be. She wasn’t going to question it. She was just going to live.
“You look like you’re silently arguing with yourself,” he said, his voice a low rumble of sound that seemed to reverberate in the big room.
“Nope,” she said, shaking her head. “No arguing.”
“No second-guessing?”
“No.”
“No changing your mind?”
“No.”
“Thank God.” He stepped into the room and used one bare foot to kick the door shut behind him. “If you had changed your mind…”
“What?” she asked, excitement jolting to life inside her. “What would you have done?”
“Left,” he admitted, then added, “and would have sat in my room, moaning in pain.”
“That would have been a shame.”
“Tell me about it,” he said with a grin as he closed in on her. “You’ve been making me crazy, Mia.”
“I have?” Oh, that was lovely to hear. She hadn’t known she was capable of driving a man crazy.
“Oh, yeah.” His gaze swept up and down her body and then met her eyes. “What’s under the robe?”