The Temporary Roomie (It Happened in Nashville 2)

Lucy sticks her tongue out at Cooper, and he narrows his eyes on her mouth, and I’m honestly scared of what’s happening between them now. It doesn’t feel like animosity, I’ll tell you that much. Jessie gives me a look that says she’s worried too. Jessie swiftly interrupts their weird eye chemistry by hugging Lucy and spilling out all of her gratitude. Their tears are flowing like waterfalls, and that’s when I exchange a look with Cooper that says, Take your wife and get out.

He chuckles and goes over to Lucy, wrapping his arm around her and steering her out of the room while she’s still talking to Jessie. “OKAY AND THE DIAPERS ARE IN THE BOTTOM DRAWER!” she says over her shoulder as Cooper pushes her from the room like she’s a helicopter mom dropping off her oldest baby at college for the first time.

“Later, man,” he says before they both disappear into the hallway.

And then it’s just me and Jessie. Alone. Finally.

She holds my gaze, and her smile grows slowly, a tilt to it that makes my stomach coil up. “You didn’t have to do any of this, you know.”

“I know.”

“It’s too much.”

“It’s not enough.”

She bites her bottom lip and looks around the room again. “I can’t stop feeling scared of all this.” She says all this but gestures between us, and I know she means our new relationship.

I start closing the gap between me and her. “That’s okay. I’m not asking you to not be scared, because I’m confident you have nothing to be scared of—and I’m excited to prove that to you.”

I run my hand from her shoulder down her arm to intertwine my fingers with hers. Her lashes are cast down, studying where our hands meet. “You’re awfully cocky.”

I grin. “That’s nothing you didn’t already know.”

Her eyes pop up to me, hazel and sparkling. “I kinda like it.”

Lifting a brow, I step as close as possible to her. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

I lean down and brush my lips over hers, never finding purchase, just taunting and teasing. “How much?”

Her eyes flutter shut and her lips part. “A little.”

I hum and nip at her bottom lip. “How much?”

She grins but keeps her eyes closed. “Some.”

“Not good enough,” I say, gathering her up in my arms and bending down to lay hot kisses up her neck.

“A lot.”

“Better,” I mumble against her jawline, and now she feels like a heavy limp noodle in my arms. “How much?” I ask one more time.

Jessie doesn’t answer me with words this time.

Bliss. Utter bliss. These past two weeks with Drew have felt like a dream, one you absolutely never want to wake up from. Fantasy boyfriends, step aside and hold Drew’s beer. He’s too good to be true. Yes, we bicker and fight. Yes, he has crazy cowlicks in the morning and bad breath like everyone else in the world. And yeah…he occasionally Dutch-ovens me under the covers. But somehow, all of those things just add to why I love him.

We both go to work during the day (I can’t bring myself to stop working yet), and I literally miss him all day. He’s started doing this thing where he takes a picture of my butt (clothed, get your head out of the gutter) when I don’t know it and texts it to me randomly to make me laugh. Yesterday, in the middle of the day, he texted me a close-up picture of my backside in jeans standing in front of the stove with a heart drawn around it. He always adds “I miss you” below the photo, and the first couple of times, I replied, “I miss you too.” But then he’d send, “I was talking to your butt.” So now I know better than to reply that way anymore.

Now, we’re on the couch, he’s rubbing my feet while we watch TV, and everything just feels too right. He’s shirtless in his lounge pants with freshly showered damp hair, and I keep sneaking a peek out of the corner o

f my eye, waiting for him to go poof. There’s this sense of foreboding that says, Things are too good, Jessie. It’s time for something bad to happen. He’s going to get tired of you.

“I see you staring at me,” he says, not taking his eyes off the TV. “Is this a good Take me to bed stare or a You have pasta sauce on your face stare?”

“Neither.”

He shifts his dark blue eyes to me and runs his hand over my swollen ankles. Seriously, little baby, get out of me already. “So it’s a freak-out stare then?”