Page 26 of Where the Roses Bloom

His other hand slid around my waist. My nightshirtbunched up as he pulled me closer, and I felt his breath catch as his hand found bare skin.

“I’ve been trying not to do this,” he murmured against my mouth. “All damn day…all damn week…fuck, since the moment I laid eyes on you.”

“Why?” I asked.

He pulled away just slightly, gazing into my eyes. Sometimes those eyes were dark enough that they almost looked brown…but right now, they were jade green. It was striking, magical.

“Because I knew,” he said quietly. “I knew if I touched you, I wouldn’t want to stop.”

My heart stuttered. The rain picked up outside, a gentle crescendo against the windows.

“Then don’t,” I whispered.

He didn’t.

His mouth claimed mine again, rougher this time, less careful. One hand slid down to the small of my back, guiding me closer, until I could feel every line of him—warm, solid, wanting. His other hand tangled in my hair as he kissed me like he meant to rewrite the story of his life with the taste of my lips.

I kissed him back with everything I had.

There was no fear in it. No hesitation. Just heat and the weight of something inevitable. My fingers curled into his shoulders as he drew me into his lap there on the floor, knees pressed to the tile, the broken porcelain scattered like rose petals around us.

The air between us pulsed with want. With a slow-burning ache that had been building since he found me in his driveway.

Since the biscuits…since the diner.

Since the very first time he looked at me like I wasreal and valued,in a way that Carter hadneverlooked at me.

“You feel like a dream,” he murmured against my throat. “But every time I touch you, I remember I’m awake.”

I couldn’t speak. Could only nod…could only think that his poetry was probably pretty good after all.

And in that warm, witching-hour hush—beneath a roof full of old secrets, with rain on the windows and roses in the air—I let myself believe it too. That this was real. That something had brought me here for a reason.

And that maybe this was where I was meant to bloom.

CHAPTER 10

Rhett

I didn’t sleep much.

Not because of the rain. Or the creaking floorboards. Or the old pipes that liked to groan when the house shifted in its bones.

No—I didn’t sleep because I couldn’t stop thinking about her.

Willow.

Her mouth on mine, soft and certain. The way she’d tasted—like coffee and sugar and something I hadn’t let myself believe in for a long time.

We’d gone back to bed after it happened. She’d pressed her palm to my chest like she could bring us both back down to earth, whispered goodnight like it wasn’t the most dangerous word in the world. And then she’d drifted off like nothing had changed…back to her room, not mine.

But damn it…everything had changed.

Something in me had tilted. Shifted. Set down roots.

Now, hours later, I stood in the kitchen barefoot, drinking the dregs of the first cup of coffee I’d made too early, waitingfor her to come downstairs so I could see if last night still lived in her eyes the way it did in mine.

There was a barbecue today. Whole damn town would be there. Wards and neighbors and friends who hadn’t seen me with a woman in years—especially not one like Willow.