“What do you intend to do about it?”
Her head shook on his shoulder. “I’ll figure something out.”
“Take your time.”
And she planted a soft kiss on his shoulder blade, then another, and rested her forehead back on his spine. “I think I will.”
Dillon, still a little cautious, quit while he was ahead, but he sensed something tender, fragile and new, in the air. It warmed him. He let it ride.
Eventually, recovered, they took a tender, slow shower and made themselves presentable before heading to the main house for breakfast. It was a group affair, all guests seated around a large gleaming table set with pretty Victorian china and cut-glass serving dishes. There were two older couples, both coincidentally in town for the graduation parties of their granddaughters, who were classmates, and a young military-bearing couple who didn’t have much to say about themselves but had the body language of long, close quarters. Accepting Mrs. Kirby’s coffee, Tracy requested hot tea for Will; Will passed Tracy the jalapeño jelly as soon as the biscuits started making the rounds.
Serena started a little when Dillon told Mrs. Kirby that she would want tea, too, but kept it together. It was only that it had belatedly occurred to her that they were still there on the job. She glanced over to see that Dillon was taking notes on the dining room and breakfast presentation—fortunately the existing photos of this part of Blue Capri were well done, so Serena didn’t have to go back to Grotta Azzurra for the camera she’d forgotten.
She chided herself about being professional, and started talking to the grandparents about the property instead of gazing foolishly at Dillon. She was really an idiot. It was a good thing they had this interlude of work to force her to settle down.
Because she was starting to feel very unsettled.
It was well and good to rearrange her home, give him a desk, admit he made her want to change. Talk about the future some. But that was still not as far down the path as he was, with his ‘I love you’ hanging in the air. And the fact was, it wasn’t his declaration that had her scared. What had shaken her was the intensity of her need for him the night before. The realization that she’d nearly screwed up what was between them, and how very very bad a thing that would be, if it happened.
Mrs. Kirby came back into the room with baked French toast and a bowl of fruit salad. Dillon raised his eyebrows at her before serving himself some strawberries, and she smiled to let him know it wouldn’t be a problem for him to eat them, and it hit her, then, that she was really just very idiotic about her own emotions.
Reminding herself every quarter hour about the whole ‘be a professional’ thing, Serena got through breakfast and a follow-up chat with Mrs. Kirby. After scheduling a phone meeting for the middle of the next week, she and Dillon returned to their approximation of a blue grotto to pack up.
She laughed at the rumpled room. “Well, it won’t take much detective work on Mrs. Kirby’s part to realize we shared a bed.”
“Want me to go jump on the other one a little, try to fool her?”
Serena smiled at her boyfriend. “No. I suspect she knows anyway. Besides, as long as we are the excellent team that we are, our personal life is none of her business.”
“Hey, we don’t have to go into the office today, do we? I mean, I don’t. Do you?”
She shook her head. “I’ll send a couple of emails now, but otherwise I’m all yours.” The truth of that made her glance up a little bashfully. “What did you have in mind? Want to hide out in Galveston another night? Because I was thinking we could hit a sports bar instead, watch Game Three on the super big screen.” The Rockets were back on their home turf and had playoff scores to settle.
“No, that’d be perfect. I just want to check out the beach. Tracy said the 37th Street Jetty is the place to go. That’s close, right?”
“Sure, it’s just one of the Seawall cross streets, not even that far from here.”
“So we can go?”
Serena laughed. “You’re quite the eager puppy. Going to take surfing up again, are you?”
“Well, I’ve lived in Houston more than long enough to have found all this out by now. I’m going to at least do some recon, see if the waves, you know, pull at my soul and all.”
She tossed her toiletry bag at him, and he caught it and stuffed it into her duffle. “You are so connected to, like, the earth, man. I had no idea. Let’s go walk the Seawall beach a little and then we can grab lunch before heading back.”
“As if I’ll ever eat again after that breakfast.”
“I thought you’d worked up a good appetite this morning.”
“Funny Serena.”
“That’s right, Surfer Dude. Funny Serena. Ready to go?”
He scooped up their overnight bags, she grabbed her work tote, and off they went.
They found parking a few blocks from 37th and descended the concrete steps to the beach. The tide was about half-out, and the beach was lined mostly with small family groups up and down the entire Seawall. Older kids were in school, but there were moms with swim-diaper-clad toddlers and preschoolers wielding plastic shovels everywhere. Plenty of older couples, too, some sedentary, some taking what looked like routine constitutionals along the packed wet sand. And, as promised, the surfers in the distance.
“Decent peaks,” was Dillon's appraisal. “Not the best.”
“Enough to tempt you?”
“Maybe. Sometime. I’ll take a look at my short board when I’m home, see what condition it’s in.”
They skirted a chubby three-year-old charging the waves and a clump of the seaweed that populated all of Galveston’s beaches. Dillon held his shoes, but Serena had been able to slip her low-heeled sandals into her shoulder bag, and when she saw some intact purple and grey clam shells, she scooped up five or six, all barely thumbnail sized. Dillon plucked them away, then stepped into the surf to rinse them for her.
“Thanks,” she said, kissing his cheek and slipping them into her pocket. The wind grabbed her hair as she turned, so she pulled it all into a ponytail and looked up at him. Dillon was staring out at the water, his feet still submerged with each wavelet that came in, a faraway look in his eyes. “Are you dreaming of the good life in California? Do you miss the Pacific?”
He reached a hand for hers and they went on to the jetty, climbing the granite slabs of the sides before stopping to lean against each other and slip their shoes back on. Soon they were several feet out along the path, the water breaking to either side of them, with few people and only the wind to catch their words.
“I don’t miss it, actually.” He pulled them down to sitting, tucking her shoulder under the arm he wrapped around her. It felt perfect, and Serena tried to figure out if working up a natural conversation or just blurting was the way to go. She had no plan. She hated having no plan, but Dillon tended to throw them all off center, anyway. “I liked growing up where I did, I had a lot of fun as a kid. Mom and Dad...they were good parents. I think you’d have liked them.”
“I’m sure I would have.”
“Well, it’s academic. It’s been a decade, you know that? Any rate, I didn’t surf much after their accident. Justin tried to take me a few times, that was one of his schemes to get me out of the house and back into the world, but he can’t surf for shit.” Dillon nuzzled her neck. “Even though I know you think he looks like a surfer dude.”
Serena giggled. She hadn’t meant to gush or anything, but clearly Dillon had noticed her awareness of his brother-in-law’s hotness quotient. “I only like the tall, dark, and handsome sort myself,” she said.
“Funny girl. The point is, while I can tell you that the tubes are infinitely better on Malibu and there’s no way I’d get any air on those breaks, I’m extremely happy to be here instead of there. My only real family is here, and you’re here.”
Right, plunging in it would be, then. The sun was warm, the wind was playful, the water wasn’t entirely brown. Best to take a deep breath and dive. “Dillon, a
bout what you said before.”
He grimaced a little. “I know, I’m rushing you. I’m sorry, Serena, I really am. And I don’t expect—that is, it has been made clear to me that I, poor orphan Dillon, am very eager to be settling down with my life and creating a nuclear family of my own. Also, I apparently bottle up bad things and hold grudges. Sorry to shatter you illusions about my perfection.” He paused so she could kiss him lightly. “I am sure I love you, you know. It’s not that I’m inventing the emotion because it suits my long-term goals. But you have to get there your own way. If you get there.” He glanced away, then bent his head to hers again. “I hope you get there. But your way. I’m not going anywhere, I can wait.”
Serena’s eyes were watering, and not from the salty wind. Dillon wiped her cheek with his thumb.
“It’s really okay, you know. You gave me the desk, and that was so amazing. Brave of you, and so important to me. It means the world to me, and,” he waggled his eyebrows and gave her that grin, “I’m hoping to spend the next few nights at your place, so I can get some use out of it. In fact, I’m hoping that you can help me break it in, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.”
Serena blew out a laugh and nestled her head so she could hear the steady beat of his heart beneath her ear. “You’re tireless.”
“That’s what you get when you date a younger man. Tons of sexual stamina.”
“I knew I picked you for a reason.”
“That’s how this happened?”
“Well, sure. I looked around the office and thought, ‘who here can make me come four times in one morning?’ and my gaze fell on you.”
“Five.”
“Smug.”
“Proud. And correct.” They kissed, a slow slow kiss that Serena felt to her toes. “But I’m glad you noticed what a stud I am. At last. I’d only been panting after you since the interview.”
“Well, I might have noticed earlier. But I figured something out about myself recently.”
“Oh, yeah? What’s that?” Dillon wrapped the bulk of her ponytail in his hand, cradling her skull and running just one light finger along the nape of her neck. He knew it would make her shiver.
“It’s about emotional honesty, and being an idiot.”
His eyes crinkled as he looked at her. “An idiot, eh?”
“I am frequently an idiot. When I’m jiggy with excitement because I’ll see you soon, and can’t stop smiling like an idiot. When I’m hit so hard with conflicting signals that I run and hide like an idiot instead of figuring it out. When I knee-jerk react to something unexpected, like being told you love me.”
Dillon. His face was sober now, his grip on the back of her head slack. He’d gone still, except for his eyes, bluer than any water on the Gulf Coast could ever hope to be, tracking back and forth across her face.
Serena offered a tentative smile. “So my New Plan—I ran out of other plans, and you know how I like to have a plan—my New Plan is to stop being an idiot.”
“Okay?”
“And to be emotionally honest. Well, that was part of the Desk Plan, but it seemed to be a good idea, so I’m keeping it as part of the New Plan.”
He nodded. He didn’t point out that she was babbling. “The Not Being an Idiot plan?”
“Right.” She nodded, and noted in doing so that his hand had tightened in her hair again. She wondered if he realized how very intertwined they’d become. Well, whatever happened, he couldn’t just up and run off from her, not without taking half her ponytail along with him. Absurd, but comforting. So she continued with the dive.
“And since I’m an emotionally honest non-idiot, it seems like I shouldn’t be scared by how much I need you. How much I want those summer mornings, and then some fall mornings, and winter evenings, come to that.”
“Serena.” His voice had gone rough.
She put a caressing hand on his cheek, and interrupted him, “I am still learning how to not be an emotionally dishonest idiot, Dillon. It won’t be overnight, and we have things to learn, both of us. But I want to learn. I want to follow this New Plan with you, for you, Dillon. Because I love you, too. I love you, and I want you to live with me.”
“Serena.” He wiped at his eyes, the other hand tight on her nape, holding her to him.
“See, now I’m grinning like an idiot again, and it’s so damn hard to kiss you when I’m grinning like an idiot.”
Dillon had a plan for that, though, and together, they managed just fine.
Epilogue
“Put the heat on?” Serena called from the bathroom.
“I will not put the heat on, you Texan wimp. It’s October.”
There was only a slight chill in the air, but Serena was wearing her #34 jersey for the Rocket’s season opener, and little else. She came through the hallway, asking, “Do you want me to have to change?”
Dillon stopped half-way to the dining table with the serving bowls in hand, and just looked at her.
In truth, his expression did plenty to heat her from the inside out, but she pretended to shiver, rubbing her arms. If doing so happened to jiggle her unbound breasts, that was hardly her fault.
“Serena,” Dillon growled, depositing the bowls in an untidy heap on the table. “We have guests coming in an hour.”
She stepped back towards their bedroom, and he followed. “You’re suggesting I dress more warmly, then?”
“I’m suggesting we don’t have time for this. You haven’t even started your salad yet.”
Serena shrugged, closing her eyes a minute as the fabric slid coolly over her eternally wanton nipples. “So?”
“And,” Dillon said, hands on her waist now and backing her up against his low bookcase full of sci-fi classics. She’d put her foot down when he moved in, insisting that he cull his collection down to a reasonable size. She’d turned a blind eye to the number of book boxes he’d stashed in the bungalow’s attic, though, so it counted as a compromise. And a good compromise, at that, since it also brought the sturdy bookcase with the hip-height perch into their bedroom. “I haven’t brought the folding chairs in off the porch yet.”
Since it had been delightful the first time, Serena shrugged again. “So? Gives people a place to sit if they show up before we’re ready.”
Dillon’s cobalt eyes were fiery enough to assure Serena that his protests were nothing but token ones. She hitched her jersey up so he could see the Rockets-red panties she wore. His palms pressed her thighs further apart. “If you’d worn something proper, we’d be ready on time. You know Jorge is always early.”
“I texted Bubba just now, asked them to pick up some tamales from that place on Studewood. They’ll be late.”
“Doesn’t mean Janice and Miguel will be.”
Serena ran her hand up Dillon’s chest, stopping to admire her engagement ring as she stroked his pecs. Dillon looked, too, then pressed forward until Serena’s legs wrapped around his hips, her arms around his neck as he pulled her tight to him.
She smiled, smug. “I knew I could distract you.”
“The dinner party was your idea, smarty pants.”
“In case you didn’t notice, I’m not wearing pants.”
“Funny girl.”
“Funny woman,” she corrected, for at least the hundredth time, tilting her pelvis into his hardness to make her point.
Dillon’s mouth paused long enough for him to say, “Funny fiancée.”
And, for at least the hundredth time, Serena gasped, overwhelmed by the surge of emotion. She took Dillon’s beautiful strong face in her hands, staring into his steady eyes, and said, “Your funny fiancée, Rocket Man.”
Never breaking eye contact, Dillon stroked her core, watching her expression do whatever stupefied things it did when she was loved by the man who loved her. “And don’t you forget it,” he said, low and intense and confident.
Smug man. She’d show him.
Just as soon as he was done showing her.
If Serena didn’t have time to arran
ge the chairs so everyone could see the TV and reach the snacks without the space feeling crowded, well. It was a small price to pay for making sure Dillon knew exactly how warm their house needed to be, for all the days of their lives.
Thank You!
It’s been a joy to send Serena and Dillon into the world, and introduce you to the Roll of the Dice friends. You’ve got more adventures with them all ahead of you!
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Ratings and reviews help me grow as an author, and I appreciate all of your feedback. Please take a moment to review me! Goodreads ~ Bookstore
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Not done with me yet? Read on!
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My ‘also by’ page has links to the rest of the Roll of the Dice series, as well as my other books. My ‘about the author’ page has links to my newsletter, website, and social buttons. I’d love to connect with you!
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Happy Reading,
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Melanie
Acknowledgments
It’s been an amazing journey getting Rocket Man to publication, and would have been one with lower lows and fewer highs if I’d been without a slew of friends and compatriots. Thanks to my WnW cult for years upon years of supportive listening, my CPs for drafts upon drafts of incisive comments, and my local gals for toast upon toast of good cheer. I’m grateful to the invaluable networks of my RWA chapters—West Houston and Contemporary Romance. Most importantly, thanks to my family for their tolerance and support, and maintaining their good opinions of me. (Probably they should stop reading after chapter 5.)
Excerpt from Ready to Roll
You’ve met Janice and Miguel; now find out how their long-anticipated date threatens to become an epic disaster. In this companion novella, Miguel discovers that the very problems he’s trying to quell provide the insights that finally make Janice Ready to Roll.
Rocket Man Page 38
