63
" Sean walked over to her, so close she wondered if he was going to try to shake some sense into her. “Then there’s just one more thing to do.”
“Oh, crap. What did I forget?” Considering how much time she’d spent going over everything in her mind instead of sleeping, she couldn’t imagine what it would be.
When he rested his hand at her waist for a few seconds before sliding it around to the small of her back, she felt her muscles tense and her cheeks burn.
“You can’t be doing that,” he said in the same low, husky kind of voice a man would use to tell a woman he wanted to take off her clothes.
Her mind was frozen, all of her attention on that warm pressure against her T-shirt, and it took a few seconds to form a coherent sentence. “Doing what?”
“You’re as jumpy as a virgin at a frat party.” He ran his fingers up over her spine until he reached the small bump of her bra strap, and then back down to her waist. “We’ve been dating a year and a half, and living together for a year of it, but you still blush and tense up when I touch you?”
He had a point, but there was no way to fix that before Gram got off her plane. “Maybe you’re just that good.”
It was the worst thing to say if she was trying to back him off and settle her overheating nerves. The grin he gave her would have been potent enough to get her out of her clothes if the situation was different.
“That’s a story I can get behind,” he said.
“Thought we were trying to keep the lies to a minimum.”
The grin only widened. “Who says it’s a lie? "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
64
" But don’t you think we should at least have a practice kiss first?”
Almost against her will, her gaze focused on his mouth. Yes. Yes, they should. “If Gram asked, I was going to tell her you have a thing about public displays of affection.”
“This isn’t public. This is your--our--home.”
“Public as in with an audience.” She needed to look away from his mouth, especially since it was getting closer, but she couldn’t.
When his face got close enough so she registered his intent, she raised her gaze to his, but it was too late. Before she could react, his lips met hers, his hand still on her back to hold her close, and she closed her eyes.
Practice. That’s all it was. And if her body started tingling and her fingers itched to run through his hair and her body wanted to melt against his…well, that just boded well for a month of pretending they were into each other, didn’t it? "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
65
" Not bad for a practice kiss,” he said in a casual voice that pissed her off. No way could he have felt nothing while her senses sizzled like a drop of water on a hot, oiled skillet.
“And the Oscar goes to,” she muttered when he winked and walked out of the room.
She was about to swear and take a kick at the coffee-table leg when she spotted him in the full-length mirror on the closet door standing ajar. He’d stopped just outside in the hall, and she watched his reverse image as he pulled at the fly of his jeans, no doubt adjusting for the evidence he wasn’t as unaffected as he wanted her to think he was.
Despite the fact both of them being affected would be an even greater complication, Emma was smiling when she met up with him again in the front hall.
“We can take my truck,” he told her in a terse voice that made her have to smother a bigger and much more smug smile.
“No, we can’t. I have the extended cab and it might rain. We can’t throw Gram’s luggage in the bed to get wet.”
“I’m driving.”
She paused halfway out the front door. “Excuse me?”
“You drive like a girl.” He held out his hand, presumably for her keys.
“You’re an ass.”
“We can stand here and argue about it. I’m sure your grandmother will understand.”
“A sexist ass, no less.”
He grinned and snatched her keys out of her hand before she could react. “Next time, you might want to actually meet the man you’re going to marry before you tell your family about him. Get in the truck. Honey. "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
66
" He got up after a minute to go into the bathroom, and on his way back, he grabbed her pillow off the couch and tossed it onto the bed. “Get over. You’re on my side of the bed.”
“It’s my bed,” she muttered, already half-asleep. “You don’t have a side.”
“Get over.”
She got over, but only because she didn’t want to ruin the glow with bickering. And once he’d gotten in on his side of her bed and pulled her close again, she didn’t really care.
“That was amazing,” he whispered.
“Magic.”
She yelped when he slapped her ass, but he was chuckling when he wrapped his arm around her and nuzzled his face in her hair. She was still smiling as she fell asleep. "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
70
" All she could do was hope Sean had put the same consideration into his sleeping attire. He probably didn’t sleep in the buff, despite the deliciously vivid visual of that her imagination had no trouble conjuring. He’d been in the army for twelve years—a good chunk of that deployed overseas—and surely they weren’t in the habit of sleeping nude.
Flannel would be nice. And not battered shorts, like hers. Long pants and a long-sleeved shirt buttoned up to his throat would be nice, like something Ward Cleaver would have worn to bed in his 1950s sitcom.
When she finally dropped the curtain on the mental drama and left the bathroom, she was a little disappointed he was already asleep. Clearly he wasn’t struggling to hold back the reins of runaway sexual attraction the way she was. He’d dimmed the overhead light, but she could hear him softly snoring and make out the sheet pulled halfway up his stomach. His naked stomach, which led her gaze to his naked chest and then to his naked shoulders, the muscles nicely highlighted by the way he slept with his arms raised over his head.
Was the rest of him naked, too?
“When you stare at somebody who’s sleeping,” he mumbled without moving or opening his eyes, “they usually wake up.”
Busted. Her face burned as though his words were a blowtorch and she rushed across the room to slap the light switch off. In the faint glow of moonlight penetrating the curtains, she went to the couch to try to get comfortable. It wasn’t quite long enough, but she curled up under the light cotton blanket and closed her eyes.
Getting caught staring on the first night was embarrassing, but at least he wasn’t a mind reader. There was no way he could guess she’d been wondering what he wore from the waist down.
“Good night, Emma.”
The quiet, husky voice in the darkness made her shiver. “Night, Sean.”
A little less than seven hours of tossing and turning later, Emma’s question was answered—much to the detriment of her recently revived libido.
At some point during the night, Sean had thrown off the sheet. Probably right around the time he rolled onto his stomach. With his hands shoved under his pillow and one knee drawn up a little, she had a clear view of his ass—showcased perfectly in dark blue boxer briefs. "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
73
" Joe had a perfect game to pass the time, he’d said. Kevin had smirked and agreed. And there were four couples, so it was perfect. Sean should have known better.
The reason having four couples was perfect, he found out too late, was because the game was a kind of demented adult version of The Newlywed Game. And now Joe and Kevin were laughing their asses off on the inside because Dani and Roger’s presence meant Sean and Emma had to keep up the pretense or Dani would tell her dad, who would in turn rat them out to Cat.
“What’s the first place you had sex?” Roger read from a card.
Dani hit the timer and six of them bent over their notepads, furiously scribbling down answers. Sean looked down at his blank page and decided to keep it simple. Hopefully, Emma would do the same.
When the timer dinged, he tossed his pencil down. Joe and Keri scored the first point by both writing, In the backseat of Joe’s 1979 Ford Grenada.For Kevin and Beth it was the hotel where Joe and Keri’s wedding reception was held, and Dani and Roger both wrote, Dani’s dorm room.
Emma grimaced at Sean and then held up her notebook. “‘On a quilt, under the flowering dogwood.’”
The other women made sweet awww noises, but Joe and Kevin were already snickering. That wasn’t keeping it simple. Under a flowering dogwood?
“We need your answer,” Roger said.
Sean held up his paper. “‘In a bed.’”
His cousins’ snickers became full belly laughs, while Dani and Roger just looked a little confused.
“Oh,” Emma said. “You meant sex with each other?”
It was a nice save, but Sean had a gut feeling it was only going to go downhill from here. "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
78
" I ran into a friend of Lisa’s today,” he told her, enjoying the way Lisa’s eyes got big and she started trying to communicate with him by way of frantic facial expressions behind her mother-in-law’s back. “Emma Shaw.”
“Emma Shaw…Oh! The one who does the landscaping, right?” Lisa nodded. “She’s such a nice girl, but I haven’t seen her in ages. Not since I ran into you two at the mall and overheard you talking about her engagement. How are she and her fiancé doing?”
Lisa opened her mouth, but closed it again when Sean folded his arms and looked at her, waiting to see how—or even if—she was going to get out of the conversation without lying outright to Aunt Mary.
“I…think they’re having some problems,” she finally said. Nice hedge, but an understatement.
“Oh, that’s too bad. What’s her fiancé’s name? I meant to ask that day, but you started talking about some shoe sale and I forgot.”
It was a few seconds before Lisa sighed in defeat. “Sean.”
“Isn’t that funny,” Mary said, smiling at him before turning back to her daughter-in-law. “What’s his last name? Maybe I know his family.”
That was a pretty safe bet. "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
80
" If I start thinking you’re just some deadbeat looking to scam Granny out of her house, I’m done.”
“Are you seriously going to do this for me?”
“I guess I am.” He pulled the cheap department-store diamond he’d picked up that morning from his pocket and held it out to her.
“Wait.” There was a faint thread of panic in her voice. “What are you doing?”
“There’s hedging and then there’s outright lying. I’d like to keep the latter to a minimum, so I’m going to propose to you, and you’re going to accept.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“So how about it? Wanna be my fiancé?”
When she blushed and nodded, he slid the ring on her finger. He had to wiggle it a bit to get it over her knuckle, but it fit better than he’d expected. It got a little awkward then, because it seemed as something should follow a marriage proposal. A kiss. A hug. Hell, even a handshake.
Then she shoved her hands—ring and all—in the front pockets of her jeans. “Thank you. For doing this, I mean. And for the ring. I can pay you for it.”
“Don’t worry about it.” False pretenses or not, no woman of his—more or less—would pay for her own jewelry. "
― Shannon Stacey , Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3)
