She laughed. “Okay, maybe not ever because you do rock my socks in bed. But that’s pretty awesome.”
Rhett stood back up and pulled her close against his chest. “Thanks. You cold?”
“Freezing.”
“Let me warm you up.” He pulled her even tighter into his arms and kissed her.
“Better than hot chocolate,” he said.
It was.
• • •
SANDY Ford watched her grandkids playing and jammed her hands into her coat pockets.
“Were they that bad?” Jeannie asked.
“Oh, they were worse,” Sandy assured her. “I know Rhett hates having his picture made, but good Lord. He looked like he did when he had the stomach flu.”
Jeannie laughed. “Maybe you should just let it go. You can’t force him into anything, you know that.”
Did she ever. He was by far the most stubborn of her kids. “I hate to accept defeat, but I may have to.”
“So what do you think of Shawn?” Jeannie asked.
“I like her.” Not that she knew her particularly well, but it was clear Rhett was happy with her, and that made Sandy happy. Glancing over at her son, she nudged Jeannie and murmured, “Look at him.”
He was doing some kind of role-playing thing, flinging his arms around and going into a crouch, while Shawn’s laughter rang in the yard.
“What the . . .” Jeannie sounded as stunned as Sandy felt. Given that Jeannie had been well into her teens when Rhett was born, she was more than aware that her brother was not the most animated Ford offspring.
Quick, before the moment was lost, Sandy reached out and snagged Erika, who had been taking shots of the kids. In a low voice, she murmured, so Rhett and Shawn wouldn’t hear her, “Five o’clock. Take the shot.”
It sounded like she was in a Jason Bourne movie, but hell, whatever it took. She wanted one decent picture of her son clearly in love.
Fortunately, Erika was a good enough photographer to understand this could be her one and only crack at going home with something for her portfolio, because she immediately swung around and started shooting. Rhett pulled Shawn into his arms and kissed her with a tenderness that brought a tear to a mother’s eye. Sandy was even willing to ignore the fact that Shawn was in her thirties if this was how her baby boy felt about her.
Erika gave a sound of triumph as she clicked through the pictures on her screen. “Look at this.”
It was a great shot. They were gazing into each other’s eyes. “I love it.”
“That’s beautiful,” Jeannie agreed.
“Rhett, come over here and see this,” Sandy called to her son. She was ready to go back in the house and drink some coffee to warm up. Mission accomplished.
• • •
RHETT had forgotten his mother was anywhere near them. He pulled back from Shawn and made a face, realizing they were still stuck doing the photo shoot. They wouldn’t be allowed to go back inside until his mother deemed a picture romantic enough. He was starting to think he’d go down on a knee in the damn mud if it got this business over with. He wanted to take his wife home and snuggle on the couch for a couple of hours until he could strip her naked and have his way with her. It was the way the last three days had gone, and he was digging it, he had to say. This marriage business was damn convenient.
The whole getting-to-know-you thing was sped up by them living in the same house. The majority of the time, when Rhett wasn’t at work or the gym, he was with Shawn, and already their days had taken on a predictable pattern of dinner, a little TV or a beer at the bar up the road, maybe some darts or pool, then a few delicious hours in bed together before they fell asleep. Honestly, he wasn’t sure he could ask for anything more perfect.
And the more time he spent with Shawn, the more he realized that his initial attraction to her was growing into something more, deeper, truer.
Hell, he was falling in love with her.
When his mother called him over, and he and Shawn saw the image Erika had captured with her camera, it was there for him to clearly see. Oh, yeah. He was falling in love with her.
Given the way she gazed up at him with limpid eyes in the photo, Rhett was inclined to think he wasn’t the only one suffering from the affliction. Shawn looked . . . soft. Gushy. Wide-eyed. It made his heart swell all over again.
“What do you think?” his mother asked. “Isn’t this a great shot?”
“That was devious, Momma,” he told her, his throat tight. He didn’t trust himself to agree with her assessment, or he might get overly emotional.
“It’s candid, honest,” his mother protested. “This is way better than anything we could have gotten with you posing.”
“I can’t argue with that,” Shawn said.
Rhett glanced down at her. Her face was pale, nose red from the cold, and she looked thoughtful, teeth digging into her bottom lip.
“Well, let’s go in the house, then, before we lose our fingers.”
His mother was all smiles, promising coffee and cookies. Jeannie grinned at him. “You’ve made her day.”
“That was my goal,” he told her sarcastically. “What is she going to do with these pictures anyways?”
“Hang them on the wall with the pictures of the rest of us from our engagement shoots. And I have to tell you, I’m jealous. Photography is so artistic now. When I married Mark, we had those horrible canned shots with his hand on my shoulder, and we’re wearing matching sweaters. I mean, seriously?”
Rhett laughed. He had spent some time as a child studying his mother’s hall of marital fame photos marching along the beige wall to the bedrooms, and he had to admit he’d been entertained by some of the fashions. “Sammy’s picture was worse than yours. Bill’s holding the cat, for Chrissake. Shawn, you have to see these pictures, seriously. It’s like an alley of awful.”
“Hush,” his mother yelled back to him.
But that only made him laugh more, glad the mood had lifted. Shawn was smiling as they went into the house and kicked off their shoes. He led her over to the hall that started with his oldest sister Sammy and descended on down to Nolan, the last Ford to get married.
“I don’t think I realized how big your family really is until just now,” Shawn marveled as they strolled down the hall, checking out his sister Rachel’s underwater scuba engagement shot, to Dawn and her husband sitting on a horse fence holding hands.
Nolan was smiling in his picture, Eve tucked up against his chest. She wasn’t smiling, which was typical Eve, but the way she clasped his hands tightly against her rib cage spoke volumes if you knew her. There was an empty spot next to them on the wall, and suddenly it wasn’t so funny anymore. Rhett knew that his picture with Shawn would be printed out, framed, and hung to fill the final spot in the Ford family puzzle. Only it wasn’t real. And in six months, he would be the first Ford to get divorced and break his mother’s heart.