Page 78 of Anger Bang
“I live at Galveston and Twenty-Fifth,” she said.
Kade threw back his head and laughed. “Less than five blocks apart, and I had to go halfway across the country to find you.”
“Hope it was worth the flight and the fact that the whole world has seen you in that baby-blue tux,” she teased.
All the humor drained from his face, and he said, “Without a single solitary doubt.”
Then he dipped his head down and kissed her. It wasn’t soft and sweet. It was hard and demanding and promised a million orgasms and a forever’s worth of tomorrows. By the time he pulled back, she was breathless, blissed-out, and beyond ready to get him back to his RV. The tux looked good on him, even with just the undershirt, but it would look great on his floor.
There was one thing she still had to figure out, though.
“I’ve gotta ask one more question.”
He took her hand in his and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “Whatever you want to know.”
“How do you like your eggs?”
Kade went statue still and then scooped her up in his arms and started toward his RV at a fast speed, considering he was still in slick dress shoes and carrying her.
“I like my eggs sunny-side up with extra toast at a diner, but scrambled with extra pepper at home.” He made the turn on the path leading to his RV and was all but sprinting toward it with her in his arms. “How about I make you some later?”
“Much later,” Thea said as he started up the steps to his RV. “Iamfalling in love with you, Kade St. James.”
He flung the door open and looked down at her with a crooked smile that stole her breath. “The feeling is mutual, Thea Pope.”
Then he carried her over the threshold, still gripping the bouquet in his hand, and their tomorrows started right then and there.
Epilogue
Three Years Later…
Nervous?
Worried?
Anxious to the max?
Thea Pope sucked in a deep, calming breath because OH. MY. GOD. YES!
Leading her first dinosaur dig was a huge deal, but when the folks at the Stinkingwater River Dinosaur Museum had reached out about a possible find nearby, her boss at the Harbor City Natural History Museum gave her the go-ahead.
Yeah, that’s right. She had emotions, and she didn’t fold them up and stuff them in a pair of too-tight pants. Instead, she now worked through the layers of her reactions to all things good, bad, and panic-inducing. That didn’t eliminate the uncomfortable feelings—which to be honest kinda sucked—but she also wasn’t beating herself up about it anymore, and that was its own kind of relief.
Giving the tiny tent one last scan to make sure she wasn’t missing anything she’d need out on the site, Thea grabbed her vented floppy hiking hat and went to go kiss her partner goodbye.
As she approached, Kade stood up from the camp table his laptop sat on. He was working on the follow-up to his best-selling narrative nonfiction about a Jack Russell that had beaten the odds by finding its way back home to its family after a hurricane and had inspired a nation.
“Man, it’s hot here in the summer,” he said as he reached behind his head and yanked his T-shirt off.
Then he had the audacity to stretch, showing off all the extra details he’d added to his owl chest tattoo. In addition to a fierce and powerful Athena, he’d added a T. rex in the middle of a terrifying growl—the tough-guy effect blunted by the baby rattle it was holding.
He flexed and gave her a wolfish leer. “Caught you looking.”
“We’re in a tent,” she said as she took her time moving her heated gaze from his crooked smile to the scruff on his jaw that had gotten a little gray over the past few years, and then to his bare chest, which still made her think very dirty thoughts. “It’s not like there are a lot of places for me to look.”
Kade snorted in disbelief and scooped up the baby giggling in the playpen next to his desk. He looked down at their son, his whole face softening.
“And that, Rex, was what she said to me right before we made you.” He sniffed the baby and scrunched up his face before reaching for one of the diapers on the corner of his desk. “If your mom keeps this up, Rex, it’s going to become a tradition.” He laid the baby on the pop-up table and went to work changing his diaper. “We’ll have to shorten the name Baryonyx to Onyx or Stegosaurus to Steg. Maybe we go with another Tyrannosaurus-inspired name with Tyra.”
