Page 132 of His to Cherish
I couldn’t figure out what he wanted with Camden. She still looked at him with disdain anytime she saw him bartending. Even after she’d found out he was a doctor and apologized to Chelsea and the girls for judging him, knowing that he could be “better” than how he was currently living seemed to make everything worse.
On top of her judgment and assumptions, Camden seemed too uptight and rigid for David, who was generally so carefree.
At least he used to be, before everything had gone tits up in Chicago.
Not that that was a conversation we had with David anymore, either. He shot Dec and me down every time we tried to talk to him. But I knew better than anyone the power and need for avoidance and keeping shit to yourself, so I was finally letting him have it. He’d done the same for me after Derrick’s death.
“Can’t help it, he’s a man on a mission. Just tell your girl to go out with him and be done with it.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes. It made me want to kiss her again, but I held back. “We have tried, constantly, but she’s adamant she doesn’t want to date him.”
I wiggled my eyebrows. “Maybe it’s not a date David’s after.”
She laughed, and that beautiful sound shot straight to my groin.
She was always so damn kind, quick to laugh and quick to love.
God couldn’t have created anyone better for me.
“Right, maybe I’ll tell her that tomorrow. The girl could use a good night between the sheets.”
“Oh God,” I groaned. I didn’t need the image of uptight Camden having sex. “Don’t talk to me about that.”
I shut her up by kissing her. My dick hardened when she instantly melted into me again, as if we were magnets and couldn’t help it. My hands moved to her butt and I lifted her, spinning her until I had her balancing on the deck railing behind me.
“There’s something I want to talk to you about,” I said when I set her down. My hands rested on her lower back, keeping her balanced, and my pulse started thrumming in my veins.
“Okay…” She frowned and I pressed my lips against hers until she relaxed.
“What’d you think of the house?” I asked, pulling back and gauging her reaction.
She smiled and her eyes softened. “It’s more beautiful than any house I’ve ever seen, definitely the best one out here.”
Back in June when she had told me she’d always wanted a place like this, I knew then that I’d be with her forever. I had known it before then, but seeing Chelsea fall in love with my work—my passion—it cemented our future in my head.
The next day, I’d had the planners help me redevelop the neighborhood plots at the back and ended one street in a cul-de-sac.
Then I bought three lots. I built this house on the middle lot so we had an acre of land on either side of us, giving us more land than we’d ever need in our lives. But I watched how Chelsea’s eyes had glazed over at the dream of living out in the open with land and trees and the creek in the distance.
Right now the trees were all turning into a rainbow of oranges and reds, and the line at the far edge of the property was completely breathtaking.
I swallowed slowly and braced myself for the possibility she might not be ready for this.
For me.
Our future.
And some would say I was crazy. That it was too soon after Derrick’s death for me to move on in this way, but I knew loss.
I knew regret.
I knew the searing pain that death and the loss of dreams caused in a person. I refused to live in fear or under a heavy cloak of darkness and sadness.
There was too much life to live, and Derrick would want that for me.
He wantedthisfor me.
Hell, I wanted this for me.
