“Faye –”

Her hand gave his a squeeze and he felt her body lean toward him as she went on, “You should be you, of course, but Dad’s a deacon at church. He mows their lawn and trims their shrubs in the summer. Mom designs the Sunday programs. And Mom gets mad at me when I say ‘frak’ and that isn’t even a real curse word. But she feels the meaning behind it is enough. I’m twenty-nine but she still hands me guff without hesitation.”

He gave her hand a squeeze back and replied, “First of all, meetin’ your family, I’m not gonna swear. Second, there’ll be kids there so I’m not gonna swear. And last, when your Dad came for his talk, he swore. Repeatedly. One thing your kid doin’ it, she’s a girl, a pretty one at that, as a parent, you feel you can tell her off for it no matter what her age. But a man talkin’ to a man, they’ll say what they like.”

“Dad cursed when he talked to you?”

Her tone was cute, breathy, disbelieving and Chace grinned through the windshield.

“Yep.”

“Really?” she whispered.

“From memory, he said ‘asshole’ more than once, ‘shit’ more than once and if you count ‘piss-ant’, he said that more than once too. There might be others and I don’t recall him droppin’ the f-bomb but he sure as f**k didn’t shy away from colorful language.”

“Holy frak,” she breathed and at that Chace smiled through the windshield.

Then he quit smiling and dropped his voice low to assure her, “Baby, it’s all gonna be good.”

“Well, you got Mom. I’ve never seen a bouquet of flowers this big.”

She was not wrong.

Chace hadn’t ever bought flowers for a woman and seen the results so he didn’t know a fifty dollar bouquet was that huge. He frequently sent flowers to his mother. But he called in the order and rarely saw the result since he rarely went home. Further, he spent seventy-five dollars on his mother’s flowers. Which, from the arrangement currently lying across Faye’s lap that Holly at the flower shop made up, with a gleam in her eye after he told her how much he was wanted to pay, meant his mother’s were likely enormous.

So it was no wonder his Ma always called, beside herself with joy when she got them. He thought she was just being sweet.

“It’s going to be all right,” he told her as he turned down the road northwest of town that led to the Goodknight house, a road nearly directly opposite where Chace’s house was located at the south.

“Liza will probably be inappropriate one way or another,” Faye stated which meant she either ignored him or was so deep in her anxiety, she hadn’t heard him.

“Faye,” he squeezed her hand, “it’s gonna be all right.”

“And she might have a drama or… you know, just so you know, she isn’t adverse to fighting with Boyd in front of people. Even the kids. If it gets rip-roarin’, she’ll tell the boys to go to another room but she doesn’t care who else witnesses it.”

“Faye,” he gave her hand a gentle jerk then held it tight and strong, “I want this to go well for you but, no offense to your family, I do not give a shit about it. I don’t go to sleep with your family. I don’t wake up to your family. I give a shit about you. But honey, that said, honest to God, I’ll like them. I know this because I’ve lived in the same town as them for thirteen years and I already like them. Gettin’ to know them better means I’m just gonna like ‘em more. That goes south for some f**ked up reason, it doesn’t change the fact that I’ll be goin’ to sleep with you and I’ll be wakin’ up with you and the rest of it, we’ll deal. Yeah?”

She didn’t reply.

Chace had to let her hand go to make the turn into her folks’ drive and he did both as he prompted again, “Yeah?”

He got no reply until he halted behind a silver Toyota 4Runner.

When he did that, she blurted, “You come from money and you handle elegant champagne glasses that had to cost a mint like they’re plastic.”

His head turned to her to see her face was pale and plainly anxious in the dash lights.

Fuck.

This was a surprise.

Fuck.

He put the truck in park, switched off the ignition and lights and turned to her.

“Come here,” he ordered quietly.

“I’m right here, Chace.”

“Come here,” he repeated.

“But, I’m –”

“Baby, come here.”

She leaned deep into him, stretching across the cab of his truck and resting a hand on his thigh.

He lifted a hand to the side of her neck, slid it back and up into her silken hair and he pulled her two inches closer.

Then he said softly, “I make almost double what you do and live in a ranch-style, four bedroom house on fifteen acres south of town. I got a manageable mortgage because my Ma’s folks left me a trust. That trust isn’t a fortune but it’s a whack. I dipped into it to get the house I wanted to live in and build a family in. I will not touch it again until I get married and have kids. Only then will it be used to make my house a home and to give my kids an education. It will be used for nothin’ else unless, God forbid, there’s an emergency.”

He pulled her an inch closer even as he moved an inch closer to her and kept talking.

“I got a small nest egg that I do what I can to make bigger just because it’s smart. I invest in a retirement plan that will augment my pension because when I’m done and livin’ the good life, I’d like that good to be better. I take two vacations a year, both to bodies of water where I can fish ‘cause I got ski slopes all around and I can go boardin’ whenever the f**k I want. I wear jeans and cowboy boots and I’ll trade up this truck this year because it’s four years old so it’s time. I’ll eat at The Rooster for a special occasion but even though that food is the shit, I’m just as happy with Rosalinda’s and that is no joke.”

He moved his other hand to curl around hers on his thigh and kept quietly going.

“My mother bought me those glasses, darlin’. That was the first time they were ever taken out of the cupboard she put ‘em in. There is other shit in that house Ma got me she thought I had to have and probably all of it is expensive because she can afford it and that’s her way. There is absolutely no shit in that house that belonged to or was purchased by Misty. What those glasses say was my life. I walked away from it when I was seventeen, I never went back, I’ll never go back and I don’t miss it. I don’t give a f**k about champagne glasses. They could be plastic for all I care. They break, they break. You broke, I’d care. Champagne glasses, no. Now you got it all so are you with me on this shit?”