“Ugh, that sounds as disgusting as all the other foods I used to love. This baby is finicky about his grub. Just like his dad.”
“Not finicky. We simply have discriminating tastes.” I draw her more fully into my arms and steal a kiss. “Speaking of, I think you’re going to love the room I booked for the weekend. It’s so close to the beach you can throw a rock out the window and hit a seagull.”
She grins. “Sounds like a good time. But we should use chalk pellets, give the seagulls a fighting chance.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were serious.”
My bride scoffs as she brushes my hair from my damp forehead. “Of course, I’m not serious. I don’t use my slingshot against innocent creatures. Unless it’s a gopher after my prized rutabagas.”
“I’m after your rutabagas, baby,” I murmur against her neck, nipping at her sticky skin. “You’re all sweaty, Mrs. Beverly.”
“I apologize, Mr. Beverly, but it’s fucking hot out here.”
“I like it,” I say. “And I’d like to get you sweatier at your earliest convenience.”
“The hayloft?” she whispers, pressing closer. “Everyone else is way too drunk to check up there. We could be up to no good and back before anyone even notices.”
“I like getting up to no good with you,” I say, taking her hand.
“Ditto, baby.” She presses on her tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “Let’s go.”
We make our escape, sneaking away to make hay in the hay and celebrate the start of our new adventure.
And being with her is as lovely as the first time—lovelier because we truly belong to each other, from this day until our last days, and every day in between.
* * *
The entire Hunter Brothers
series is Available Now!
* * *
Learn more here.
The Twelve Dates of Christmas
A Lonesome Point Holiday Novella
* * *
By Lili Valente
Prologue
Lula
Eleven years ago…
The desert night was cool, the Christmas carnival cast downtown Lonesome Point, Texas in giddy splashes of color and light, and the air smelled of hot chocolate, cookies, evergreen trees, and unadulterated happiness.
The old west town came alive on December twenty-fourth when the shops on Main Street brought their wares out to the sidewalk for the annual holiday sale, a carnival set up in the square, and mistletoe hung from every street lamp, issuing an invitation to romance that only a Scrooge could refuse.
And Tallulah Josephine Watson was no Scrooge.
She’d deliberately staked out a spot beneath a clump of mistletoe, across the street from the Blue Saloon Hotel, and her lips were tingling with anticipation. She could feel it in her bones, in her fluttering belly, in her feet that couldn’t seem to stand still.
She paced back and forth in her red ballet flats, purchased to match her red dress with the Peter Pan collar and the scandalous hemline. Her green eyes scanned the lamp-lit street, determined to spot Carter the moment he turned the corner.
Lula wanted to remember every single second of tonight, the night the man of her dreams asked her to marry him. He’d told her to dress for a special evening, and she had it on good authority—her Aunt Cathy, who owned the jewelry store—that he’d been in to the Lonesome Point Mining Company to purchase a diamond ring a few days ago. Visions of romantic proposals under the mistletoe had been floating through Lula’s head ever since.
She couldn’t wait to say yes to the most fascinating, funny, adventurous, gorgeous man she’d ever met.
Carter was an archeologist and treasure hunter who’d been working the mesa around Lonesome Point’s ghost town for the past two years. He’d come to southwest Texas hoping to find gold bars hidden in the hills by a notorious wild west outlaw and stayed to help a team of paleontologists unearth dinosaur bones in the desert nearby. He joked that he’d come to Lonesome Point hunting treasure, but the only time he’d struck gold was when he met Lula Jo.
She felt exactly the same way.
Lula swung in a giddy circle, sending her skirt twirling around her thighs. She was going to say yes to forever with Carter in a few short hours! The thought made her stretch her arms over her head and blow a celebratory kiss to the stars in the cool winter sky.
“Hope you have some of those left for me,” a deep voice rumbled from behind her. A moment later, Carter’s muscular arms were around her waist, lifting her feet off the ground as he pressed a kiss to the curve of her neck.
“How do you always manage to sneak up on me?” Lula asked, giggling. “I think you’re part mountain lion.”
“Part ninja,” Carter corrected, smiling against her skin. “Self-trained ninja—the most dangerous kind. All the stealth, none of the honor code.”
“Ninjas didn’t have a code. They were assassins who specialized in covert espionage in feudal Japan.” Her laughter turned to a sigh of contentment as she shifted in Carter’s arms and looped her wrists around his neck. “You’re thinking of samurai. They’re the ones who had a code.”