Exclusively Yours

by Shannon Stacey

  “At sitcoms, but not at life. Not…just to laugh.”

  Deflating like a cold balloon, Terry put her hand on her husband’s shoulder and pushed at him. “Now I’m sorry I called you and asked you to come over.”

  He captured her wrist and raised her hand to his mouth. When he drew her finger into his mouth and sucked lightly, the little twinge of sexual need at the small of her back flared into a full-blown ache. He locked gazes with her and she felt the heated flush climbing her neck and spreading into her face.

  “I’m not,” he told her.

  “That’s because we’re not talking about what’s wrong with you.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with you. There’s been something wrong with us.” He let go of her hand and grabbed her hips, sliding her to the edge of the table so his denim-covered erection was pressed against her and her legs wrapped around his waist. “But right now, let’s focus on what’s right with us.”

  “I’m having a little trouble focusing at all.”

  “I’m going to fix your fixation on my shoes, too,” he said, running his hands up over her ribs until he was cupping her breasts.

  “How are you going to do that?” she asked, surprised she had enough breath left in her lungs to make words.

  “I’m going to unzip my pants and then I’m going to do you just like this on the table, with my shoes on,” he said, and her entire body started celebrating when his hand left her breast and reached down between them to unbutton his fly. “And from now on, every time I walk into this house with my shoes on, you’re going to remember this day and all the things I’m about to do to you and the last thing on your mind will be footprints on the linoleum.”

  It was a struggle not to pant in the face of such delicious anticipation. “I don’t know. Clean floors are pretty important to me.”

  “Screw clean,” he told her and she heard the rasp of his zipper. “Right now I want to be dirty.”

  Twenty minutes later, Evan could have tracked cow manure across the linoleum, over the living room hardwood and up the carpeted stairs for all Terry cared. The ugly table wasn’t the most comfortable piece of furniture she’d ever been sprawled across, but it was definitely her new favorite.

  At some point he’d ended up on the tiled surface with her and now his pants were around his knees. Still had his shoes on. Thank goodness she’d been so paranoid about being in the kitchen in her skimpy nightgown she’d pulled every blind in the house.

  He shifted onto his side, flopping his arm across her and planting a kiss on her shoulder. “I like this table.”

  “Me too,” she murmured, too wiped out to care that the hard surface wasn’t the best mattress for middle-aged bones.

  “Wonder if there’s a matching coffee table version.”

  She laughed, a breathy sound due to her still being a little winded. “We could just get a bigger couch.”

  “We could get a leather one,” he agreed.

  We.

  “Steph won’t be home for another three hours.” Maybe it was the great sex or maybe it was the fact that this was her life—the one she wanted back—but she took a deep breath and stepped off the ledge. “We could get dressed and go pack up some of your stuff. Bring it home.”

  The arm across her tightened and she felt his sigh against her heated skin. “That sounds like a plan.”

  “I love you,” she told him, because it seemed important that she say it first this time.

  “I love you, too. And you better hurry if you’re going to get dressed. Lucky for me, I’ve still got my shoes on.”

  Keri wasn’t surprised to turn the corner to the cabin and see Joe’s SUV parked in front of it, but the way her heart seemed to seize up in her chest was a bit of a shock.

  She stopped walking, her mind racing as she tried to guess why he was there. It was only a matter of time before the owner called the Kowalskis—she’d known it from the time she’d arrived—but she hadn’t been sure Joe would come. She’d hurt him when she left and then she’d ignored his calls for days. And who knew how many times he’d called since she left the land of cellphone reception.“You gonna stand there all day?”

  She hadn’t even seen him, sitting on the picnic table in the shade. With his elbows rested on his knees, hands hanging between his legs, he looked totally relaxed. Forcing her feet to move, she continued toward the cabin.

  “I see somebody finally ratted me out,” she said, trying to keep her tone light.

  “They were worried about you being here alone.” He pushed himself off the bench and met her at the cabin door. “They didn’t know what else to do for you, so they called Pop. Said you looked sad.”

  She went through the door first and dropped into a chair. “I’ve been happier.”

  Like last week and the week before when she and Joe had stayed in this same cabin together. Sometimes it seemed like it had been a dream, so separated was it from her usual day-to-day life, but it had been a really good dream.

  He dragged the other chair close to hers and turned it around to sit on it backwards, like guys usually did. “What happened, babe?”

  She managed a one-shoulder shrug. “I guess Tina was right. I don’t have the balls for the job anymore.”

  “While the mere mention of you having balls gives me a serious case of the heebie jeebies, I think it takes more nut to walk away from everything you’ve worked for rather than hurt people you care about.”

  “Well, me and my impressive nut are currently unemployed.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? I’d have come up and stayed with you.”

  “I didn’t know what to do. But I was happier here than I’ve been in years, so I came here to figure it out.” It didn’t sound any more logical now than it had when she packed a bag and headed for the airport. “I wasn’t sure if it was being here with you that made me happy or if it was just being totally out of the rat race—no phones, no email, no meetings—for two weeks.”

  He folded his arms across the back of the chair so he could rest his chin on them. “The owner said you’ve been here a few days.”

  “Yup, with no phone, no email, no meetings.”

  “And?”

  She sighed. “I think it’s you.”

  Joe laughed. “You don’t have to say it like that—like I’m the plague. I think it’s a good thing you were happy with me.”

  “That’s because you don’t have to sacrifice anything to be with me.”

  “You’re right. I don’t have to change jobs in exchange for spending the rest of my life with the person I love.”

  “Don’t do that, Joe. It’s not like I’m exchanging one fast food hat for another. I’ve dedicated years to—”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right about that.” He got up off the chair and paced a tight circuit for a few seconds. “But don’t downplay what I’ve had to ante up, either. You left me once and it almost ruined me. Do you know hard it was for me to ask you to stay? And then you left me for the second time. Yet here I am again, pride checked at the door.”

  “But, Joe—”

  “And if you’d answered your freakin’ phone before leaving California I could have told you I was willing to come to you. It’s not like I can’t afford to fly across country a few times a year. But by the time I got desperate enough to call Tina, you were gone.”

  She didn’t know what to say. He was willing to leave his family and move to the opposite end of the country to be with her, but was that what she really wanted? Even without the promise of Joe, she’d breathed a sigh of relief when she disembarked at Logan.

  “So you’d go back with me?” she asked, just because she could barely believe it. “There are a half-dozen L.A.-based magazines who’d be interested in me.”

  His jaw tightened, but he nodded. “If that’s what it takes.”

  “It took me a few days to realize why I was so miserable after I got home. Part of it was missing you, but part of me felt like I’d put a costume back on and it no longer fit right.
It’s like I was being who I thought I wanted to be, but when I was here I was who I really am.”

  “I’m confused.”

  “So was I.”

  “No, I mean about us. Is there an us? Are you going back to California? Did that costume include black fishnet stockings?”

  “Yes, no, and they chafed too much so I took them off.”

  It took him a second to match the answers to the questions, then he grinned. “Did you take them off slowly, unrolling them a little bit at a time?”

  “Focus, Joe.”

  “Oh, I am, babe. Believe me.”

  She had to look away from his dimples before her train of thought jumped the tracks to follow his. “On our future.”

  “Does our future include black fishnet stockings?”

  “At the rate we’re going, our future includes support hose.”

  Joe withdrew a clenched fist from his jeans pocket and after giving her a highly dramatic rolling of the eyes, got down on one knee.

  She thought the little squeaking sound she heard might have been the strangled panic rising in her throat. This was a big leap from maybe having a future. “I didn’t mean you had to hit the warp drive button.”

  “You said this shit was romantic.”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  He unfolded his fingers to reveal his bulky class ring, a not-so-delicate gold chain already strung through it. “Keri Daniels, will you go steady with me?”

  The relief—and okay, maybe just a tinge of disappointment—made her laugh. “Tell me you didn’t drive here in a Ford Grenada.”

  “I almost got one on eBay, but some guy snuck in a high bid at the last second.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Yes, and you’re not answering my question.”

  “I was going to slip a note through your locker vent later.”

  With a grunt he tried to hide from her, he pushed himself back to his feet. “You’re killing me, babe.”

  “Yes, Kowalski, I’ll go steady with you. Does that still mean making out in the back seat and watching really dumb action movies?”

  “Yeah, pretty much.”

  “Good. And my dad gave up golf, so you’re safe there.”

  “Oh, well going steady also now means living in sin with me until I find the perfect ring and propose properly.”

  She snorted. “Keri Kowalski?”

  “At least Terry’s last name is Porter now, so you won’t be too ridiculous out in public together.”

  “She sent me an email about her and Evan. That’s really great. And Bobby sent me about sixty pictures of his Wii, including close-ups of the control buttons, which would have been a lot more fun to look at if I wasn’t up here in the land of dial-up. Plus I get about six emails an hour updating his high scores.”

  Joe arched an eyebrow. “Emails?”

  “Okay, so I cheated. Charlie lets me use his computer when I go down to the store for my daily chocolate fix. And Danny and I have exchanged a few emails about short story markets.”

  “You’re just going steady with me for my nephews.”

  She smiled and shrugged. “Don’t forget Steph. She sent me some pictures, too.”

  “Any other secrets?”

  “I’ve also been in touch with a former colleague who relocated to New York. She set me up with a job freelance editing from home—or wherever my computer access may be. It’s not a lot of money—really not a lot of money, but it sounds less stressful than trying to rebuild my career out here. I don’t want to commute to Boston.” Saying it out loud helped cement how right her decision was.

  “I’m sure Kowalski Inc. could throw a little freelance work your way, too. And if you’re good in bed, the boss will give you nice bonuses.”

  “I don’t care about Kowalski Inc. I want you. Just Joe.”

  He stuck a finger through the belt loop on either side of her waist and hauled her into his arms. “I can’t wait to be married to you.”

  “I’d suggest we elope, but the idea of your mother stalking around Las Vegas with her wooden spoon looking for us scares me.”

  “Plus that would deny me the satisfaction of giving any magazine but Spotlight exclusive photos of the Daniels-Kowalski wedding.”

  “The Daniels-Kowalski Wedding of Doom,” she corrected him, making him laugh.

  “I suppose,” he said, sliding his hands down to cup her ass, “that with both of us being writers, you’ll expect me to write my own vows.”

  “Um, you write sick, twisted horror, so probably not.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and gazed into the face of the man she was going to spend the rest of her life with. “Just promise to love me forever.”

  “This is one story that’s going to have a happy ending,” he told her, and he lowered his mouth to hers.

  Keri Daniels-Kowalski, she thought as she surrendered to his kiss. Joe’s wife. Had a nice ring to it.

  About the Author

  Shannon Stacey married her Prince Charming in 1993 and is the proud mother of two incredible sons. She lives in New England, where her two favorite activities are trying to stay warm and writing stories of happily ever after. And while her two cats refuse to curl up on her lap and keep it warm while she writes, her Shih Tzu is never far away.When she’s not writing, she’s indulging in her other passion—four wheeling! From May to November, the Stacey family spends their weekends on their ATVs, making loads of muddy laundry to keep Shannon busy when she’s not at her computer.

  You can contact Shannon through her Web site, http://shannonstacey.com, where she has maintained an almost daily blog since 2005, when she sold her first book. You can also visit her Facebook page, http://facebook.com/shannonstacey.authorpage, or e-mail her at shannon@shannonstacey.com.

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  ISBN: 978-1-4268-9001-7Copyright © 2010 by Shannon Stacey

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  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

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