I heard Deacon’s head move on the pillow and I knew it was him digging it in so he could say to the headboard, “Jesus.”

“Just saying,” I muttered.

“You think I’d ever do anything to you that you wouldn’t like?” he asked.

I was an idiot.

“No.”

“You got nothing to worry about.”

“Okay.”

“Now go to sleep.”

“Your wish is my command.”

That got another arm squeeze, this one I read as amused and annoyed.

It also got another “Jesus.”

I was right. I heard it in his tone.

Amused and annoyed.

I grinned at his chest.

“’Night, Deacon.”

His body relaxed. “’Night, Cassie.”

I snuggled closer.

Deacon’s arm grew tighter.

He fell asleep before me.

I fell asleep thinking that I was going to pitch a fit at the cashier when we went to the grocery store.

But only to bust his chops.

Then I was going to let him pay for the groceries.

That said, no way in hell he was buying the shingles.

Chapter Eleven

Better Every Day

“Woman!”

This was shouted through the bathroom door by Deacon.

And I was guessing it was shouted because he was sick of waiting for me to get ready.

This was something I was putting some effort into after being on a roof most of the day helping Deacon with my gutters. Then I helped him with the cabins’ gutters. All of this before we went back to the house to clean up before going to Milagros and Manuel’s for dinner.

My efforts were going to freak them out. I didn’t think they’d ever seen me with makeup and now I had a face that wasn’t heavy with it, but I’d given it a light go over with a dewy sheen to my cheeks, accent shadow at my eyes, mascara, and eyeliner. I also had my hair in big curlers that would eventually give it wave and body (or, more wave and body).

It might also freak Deacon out (though I doubted that, not much freaked him).

Even so, I was doing it because I felt like doing it but also because this was Deacon and my first date (in a way) and I felt the occasion warranted it.

What I didn’t admit to myself was that I was doing it because Deacon thought I was beautiful just as me and I was wondering how he’d feel when I put a little oomph behind it.

“I’ll be ten minutes,” I called back.

“Jesus,” I heard muttered.

I grinned at the mirror and dabbed more shiny cream blusher on my cheeks to give me more dew.

“You need something to do, unpack!” I yelled. “You’re gonna be here awhile, no use living out of a bag on the floor.”

This was my way of saying his exploded bag on my bedroom floor was not something I cared for. I wasn’t freakishly tidy, but I’d got my foot tangled and tripped over a pair of his jeans when I’d stumbled to the bathroom before dawn and I hadn’t enjoyed it.

“Unpack?” he yelled back like that idea was foreign to him.

Then again, it probably was.

“Yes!” I replied on a shout. “Like, you know, taking your clothes out of your bag, hanging what needs to be hung, shoving in a drawer what needs to be shoved in a drawer, and stuffing into the laundry what’s not clean.”

“Badasses do not unpack,” he returned.

I grinned at the mirror again and started to put away my makeup. “Right, then toss your dirty clothes in the laundry and drag your other crap into the closet and leave it on the floor in there!”

“On a scale of one to ten, how important is this to you?” he asked through the door.

Another grin and “Eighty-five!”

I heard his chuckle, liked his chuckle, and lifted my hands to the curlers.

I took the ten minutes I told Deacon I’d take pulling out the curlers and smoothing some gunk through my hair that was supposed to separate and hold that I was surprised hadn’t congealed in the possibly two years since I’d used it. I did some teasing, some flipping, and then some spraying.

The results were good so I was grinning again when I spritzed on perfume, looked back to the mirror, and took myself in fully.

I didn’t go whole hog with the makeup (though I did with the hair). I also didn’t go whole hog with my clothes. But I again made an effort.

I wasn’t sure Deacon had seen me in anything but tees, shorts, sweaters, and jeans.

This wasn’t a big departure from that, but now I was wearing a long-sleeved, semi-fancy tee. It was a fantastic olive green that did good things to my eyes. It was blousy up top and had a wide neckline so it dipped off a shoulder, exposing the black lacy bra strap underneath (putting on one of the few good pairs of underwear I had was another effort I’d made; the hint at bra strap an indication of goodness to come later for Deacon). The rest of the shirt fit snug at my breasts, ribs and waist, the hemline low, covering me to mid-hip.

The shirt was five years old. I’d always loved it but I hadn’t worn it in ages.

I’d paired this with some nice jeans, far less faded than my others. And when I left the bathroom, I was going to add jewelry.

I had some heels, none of which had been out of their boxes for so long they might have disintegrated, though I was afraid to check. But so as not to give Milagros and Manuel heart attacks, I was going to wear some flippies. However, the flippies I was going to wear were going to be the ones I sometimes wore into town, these being the ones with the rhinestones on them.

Satisfied with my efforts, I exited the bathroom and saw Deacon from the side of my eye standing outside the closet. I turned to him and stopped dead.

This was because he was indeed standing outside the closet.

But he was doing it with the velvet ropes I’d bought in a moment of weakness years ago when I was with Grant. A moment of weakness that was born ages ago, when I was seventeen.

Certain my brother had stolen one of my favorite CDs, I’d searched his room and found some magazines under my brother’s bed. It was in them that I saw the image. An image that affected me in a way that freaked me out at the time but didn’t let go. An image that stayed with me into being an adult when I could process it and psych myself up to explore it.

An image that pushed me to buying those ropes off the Internet and approaching Grant with my idea, to disastrous results.

And they were ropes I saw now I should have thrown away because Deacon had found them where I’d thrown them on the floor in the corner of my walk-in closet and forgotten them. And now he was standing there, holding his hands out in front of him, the ropes draped over them.