Page 86 of Blade

“Sounds good. Groceries tonight and fancy tomorrow.” There had to be someplace good. “I’ll look up some places while you’re trying on clothes.”

No point in spending that kind of money and not getting great food.

“But if you weren’t imagining spending an obscene amount of money on dinner, what were you trying to look so innocent about?” His dramatic sigh made me want to laugh. “You did it a bit too well and it stood out. Try a different expression next time.”

“Brat.” He looked lighter, though, so I’d gladly claim the title. “I was actually thinking of something bigger.”

Bigger than dinner?

“Did you want to get some of the comics ordered online right away?” We could probably get them shipped to the coven’s house…Blaine’s house…whoever’s house before we wanted to leave. “I can get that magazine rack I showed you put up by the couch. It’s not going to be hard.”

Nope.

He looked even more guilty as he shook his head. “I was actually wondering how attached you were to the trailer.”

The trailer?

“The colors or something?” It was kind of old but they weren’t bad and Blaine didn’t seem to realize they were out of date. “Do you want a new bedspread? They’re not expensive.”

Something had him smiling and shaking his head. “You’re cute but picture this from a kept man’s perspective.”

A kept man’s perspective.

Oh.

Okay, I was slow but not stupid.

“I don’t think in those kinds of terms.” Blinking, I tried to think about how I felt. “You’re talking about getting a newer one, right? At least something a bit bigger?”

It worked when he didn’t have any stuff, but the trailer really was made for weekend trips, not two people living in it full time.

“Something slightly bigger was my first thought but I don’t know enough about modern trailers to know if a newer one would give us amenities you’d like to have or we’d need to have while traveling in it as our main home.” Whatever he saw on my face had him pausing.

“What?” I was still playing catch-up and wondering what he was thinking with that shirt.

We had very different views on clothes…but he seemed to have better taste than me, so I was just going to learn and try not to be a pain in the ass.

Unless he started taking away my T-shirts.

But based on how he was watching me, I might’ve ended up as a pain in the ass for other reasons. “Explain what you’re thinking, please.”

We weren’t thinking the same things.

Nodding slowly, he kept his steady gaze on my face. “I don’t know how people see financial discussions these days but before this would’ve been a difficult topic.”

Oh.

“Um, I think this goes back to strange upbringing.” How would the men I’d dated react about this? Badly. “Yeah, other couples would be weird about this and families would fight about it. Money is still a weird topic. We talk about relationships and all kinds of stuff related to that but not about finances.”

Looking less like I was a bomb about to unexpectedly go off, he reached over and squeezed my hand quickly before letting it go. I had to fight not to smile and dance around like a kid. I knew it was a big step for him.

Knowing it was legal and really grasping that on a personal level were two very different things.

“In my family we worked to fund projects, so I don’t think I grew up seeing it the same way.” How could I explain this? “We worked on a farm one time for about three months to afford atrip up to Alaska because they heard about strange stuff going on in one of the national parks up there. Once we took the trip we were broke again, so I think that’s when my dad did logging for six months…or it might’ve been fishing? I don’t remember. I was little.”

And we did it a lot, so the dates and locations kind of ran together.

“When I wanted to…let’s call it go out on my own, I took a few jobs doing different things. My family knew I wanted my own trailer, so no one thought it was odd.” Until I’d left in the middle of the night. “So I just see your money as something to tease you about but I don’t feel weird about it.”