Page 58 of A Lick and A Promise
Now I appeared insulted. “Eating dry popcorn? Uh…no.”
“You’re on butter. I’ll get out the popcorn popper,” he said, moving us, so Jacques, who was curled at our feet, jumped off the couch then got excited when we headed toward the kitchen (Knox was a treat guy, I said no human food often, and he ignored me every time I said it—I couldn’t be certain, but I was thinking Jacques was contemplating defecting).
And just to say, I could fall in love with a man who had a popcorn popper.
And who spoiled dogs.
We made popcorn.
I confided in him about my remote anxiety while we did, and he nearly injured himself laughing.
I huffed.
He kissed the huff out of me.
We returned to the couch, but this time, tangled up sitting so we could share the massive bowl.
Knox often sent kernels flying, and Jacques went after them.
I often told him to stop doing that.
He consistently ignored me.
He also grumbled through the next two episodes.
Honestly?
I didn’t care.
Even if it was scary, it was also hot he knew this shit.
And as ever and always with my open mind, I was learning all sorts of things, and letting them soak in.
I was walking from my car to The Porch for dinner with Brady, doing this reading a text that Gemma sent forewarning me not to come up with any last-minute excuses to get out of karaoke (I was considering a flash bout of tonsilitis, but apparently that sterling idea was going to die an early death).
I was almost to the door when I looked up and saw a car drive by in the parking lot.
It was mostly past me, so I didn’t see the driver well.
But I could swear it was Cheyenne.
Shit and hellfire.
I stopped and pivoted, watching the car traverse the lot to see if I could clock her on the back curve and…
Yup.
It was fucking Cheyenne.
“Shit and hellfire.” I said it out loud that time.
After I processed how annoying (and perhaps scary) that was, I sighed, deciding, if she wasn’t there coincidentally (and I knew she wasn’t, my guess, she’d followed me from Knox’s, which meant she did that from there to my house to here, quite the commitment), to think on what I was going to do about that after dinner with Brady.
What I knew I wasn’t going to do was tell Knox.
But I was now glad we were going to have our talk.
We needed to get a few things straight.
