“I don’t need to clean my gutters. I have evergreens all around my house.”

He turned fully to me. “They drop needles, woman. And you got aspens, some of ’em tall, not to mention those three big birches at the front of your house and the elms close to the river.” I was having difficulty processing Deacon’s knowledge of my trees as he kept talking. “Rain last night was fallin’ over the sides, not goin’ where it’s supposed to go. This means the gutters are probably caked.”

I’d noticed that but it hadn’t occurred to me my gutters needed cleaned, mostly because I liked that fall of rain. Of course, not when it was pouring down, then that heavy fall kind of freaked me out.

I still didn’t think about cleaning my gutters.

Deacon did and this explained him looking at what I thought were the trees last night. But it wasn’t the trees. It was the rain coming over my gutters.

I wasn’t sure how to take this conversation so I decided it was best to feel my way.

“Are you gonna clean my gutters?” I asked.

“Not buyin’ a ladder for my woman to do it.”

Okay, I knew how to take that, as in like it a whole lot.

Now to the tough stuff.

“Did you think of maybe telling me you were going to clean my gutters and needed a ladder to do it before taking off to look at ladders, leaving me talking to myself?” I asked.

“When I took off, you weren’t talkin’.”

I found this hard to believe, though I did have to take a breath so perhaps he’d escaped when I did that.

“Still,” I said quietly.

“I didn’t drive to Wyoming, Cassidy,” he pointed out.

“I didn’t know where you went.” My voice dipped lower. “And I’ll point out, I phoned and you didn’t answer again.”

His reply to that was “Phone’s on the nightstand.”

I blinked.

Who left their phone on the nightstand?

He went on, “Don’t need one when I’m with you.”

There was a lot there, including the clashing feelings of being happy he was again demonstrating he was with me as in with me and wanted that without any distractions and the disturbed feeling that this might mean he didn’t have anyone to talk to, not that he didn’t want to talk to anyone.

I didn’t get into that. I stuck with the matter at hand.

“You do when you take off in a store that’s as big as three warehouses and I don’t know where you are.”

His head tipped slightly to the side and his brows drew slightly together before he asked, “Are we havin’ this conversation?”

In other words, this conversation was a conversation he felt was ridiculous.

I didn’t agree.

I lifted my hands and dropped them, saying, “Deacon, you took off and I didn’t know where you went.”

“Did it occur to you that I’d be back?” he returned.

“Not really,” I shot back, and I knew he got me because suddenly his face changed.

“Cassie,” he said softly.

“Okay,” I said briskly in order to cover the vulnerability I’d just exposed. “I’m the woman in your life, not your mother, so I’ll say this won’t happen often. But right now, it’s gonna happen.”

The softness in his expression changed, his lips twitched, and I wasn’t real fond of that (well, I was, just not right then) but I carried on anyway.

“It’s sweet, you drove hell bent to get to me but don’t ever do that again. You need to sleep and eat,” I bossed and kept going so he wouldn’t say anything that might tip my precarious mood, something I knew could happen because his lips were still twitching and now his eyes were dancing. “Second, if we’re at a store—a gigantic one, an average one, a fruit stand on the side of the road—you don’t take off without telling me where you’re going.”

“A fruit stand?” he asked and there it was. That sound I liked so much. The thread of humor reverberating in his tone.

“Don’t tease me when I’m borderline pissed.”

“Thank fuck it’s only borderline,” he muttered, still teasing.

“Just saying, I go back to my trolley and one single pansy I selected has been taken by another customer, borderline will be a memory.”

“Can you do that without me at your side so I can get a ladder?”

I knew he was still teasing, I could tell by the glint in his eye that made him almost cute, if that could be believed.

I still didn’t like it (well, I did, just not right then).

“Are you gonna shove a woman who spent three weeks thinking that we were finished, and not liking it much, over the edge in a home improvement store?” I demanded to know, slamming my hands on my hips.

Half a second later, my hands were not on my hips. They were on Deacon’s flat abs because he moved, leaning in to me, hooking me at the back of my head, and yanking me into him so I had to throw my hands out to brace against impact.

My head tipped back and his came down, so close, the side of his nose brushed mine, his eyes were all I could see, and I could feel his breath against my lips.

“No,” he whispered.

That was it.

No.

No, he was not going to shove me over the edge in a home improvement store after I’d spent three weeks hurting because I thought we were over. No, he was not going to do that because Deacon just wouldn’t do that, but also because he regretted that I spent that time hurting. And no, he was not going to do that because he didn’t want us to be over either and he’d thought we were and he’d spent that time hurting.

He said that all through his no.

But mostly he said it through pulling me to him the way he did to whisper that one word to me.

Therefore, I leaned in to him to share how this made me feel and I did it without even giving him a word.

I figured he got me because I was learning Deacon was good at that.

He kept whispering. “This goes bad, Cassie, we’ll talk it out. I will not leave you wondering and I will never leave you hanging.”

“Okay,” I whispered back.

“You gonna return that favor?”

“I hope this doesn’t go bad,” I replied and saw his eyes fire, showing me he hoped that too, something I liked even better than standing close to him in the aisle of a home improvement store, which said a lot. “But if it does, I’ll definitely return that favor, honey.”

He held me close, looking into my eyes for several moments, before he murmured, “Good,” brushed his mouth against mine and let me go.