I can feel the tension radiating off her and am incredibly curious about what exactly is going on.

“We’ll deal with it if it becomes an issue. Regardless I’m the one who’s gonna get the blame. He’ll come after me… That’s what —” Her voice cuts off when she opens her eyes and sees me standing in the doorway, shoulder against the doorjamb and hands shoved in my pockets. “I’m sure we’ll get everything worked out,” she says, her demeanor changing, voice softening, and I’m not sure if it’s because she has an audience now or because she’s trying to soothe whoever is on the other end of the line. Regardless, something is going on – that much is evident when she hangs up the phone without breaking eye contact with me or without saying another word.

“Nice broadcast attire,” she says with a smile as she motions to my shorts and bare feet.

And I may be enthralled with the woman in so many ways I can’t enumerate them all, but I know a change of topic when I hear one. At first I thought she’d just gone into the hallway to give me privacy during my broadcast – but now I’m beginning to think there was more to it than that.

“Thanks.” I give her a nod of my head, trying to feel out where to go with this. “Everything okay?”

“Yep,” she says as she brushes past me into the hotel room.

“Yep? Because it didn’t sound like it. What’s going on, Beaux?”

“Nothing.”

I snort, can’t help it because I wasn’t born yesterday. “Uh-huh. He’s gonna kick your ass over it? That doesn’t sound like nothing to me.” I challenge her to answer the question and dare her to meet my eyes because I hate the feeling I have deep down that something is off when things between us have just started to feel so damn right on.

When she finally looks at me, I witness her green irises swimming with conflicted emotion and her lips opening and closing without saying a word. I decide to let her have the moment, allow her to keep whatever cards she’s playing close to her vest.

“Don’t ruin this, Tanner. Please don’t ruin this incredible night.” She takes a step toward me and stops. “Today, tonight, has meant more to me than any day in a long time, and I can’t argue with you over this right now. Please trust me when I tell you that things aren’t always what they seem. That conversation, please just forget about it. I’m fine. Nothing is wrong. Just shit at home…” Her voice fades off, and I eye her warily, not believing a word she says. “Please don’t make it something it’s not and tarnish what happened tonight.”

She steps into me as soon as she finishes speaking, both of us proceeding cautiously, as I start to process what she’s said and she waits to see if I’ll accept her request. Her eyes plead with me, reinforcing her words, and as much as I want to shake some answers out of her, I also want to fold her in my arms and erase the look in them.

The fact that I don’t like the words I overheard or the fear I somehow feel emanating off her means I clench my jaw to prevent any questions from tumbling out, keeping them churning just beneath the surface. I don’t deserve to know all of her deep dark secrets yet because we’re still getting to know each other and still I feel the inherent need to protect her from whatever is haunting her eyes.

She must feel my turmoil because she reaches up on her tiptoes to brush her lips to mine in an attempt to ease the sting of the secrets she’s keeping from me. And call me a sucker, but it does help a little bit. Well, until my phone rings – Rafe’s distinct ringtone interrupting us.

Duty calls. Too bad everything within me wants to be focused elsewhere at the moment.

Like on her.

I know I’m dreaming, know this can’t be real, but it feels so good to see Stella and the familiar smile on her face again, that I welcome the memory. I glance over at her and just shake my head. There’s nothing else I can really do because she’s just that damn funny.

“What? It’s true.” She shrugs, blond hair falling over her shoulders and a bottle of beer in her hand.

“It is not!” But I can’t keep from laughing because she knows me too well.

“That’s such crap. I’ve seen you do it. The minute a woman tells you she loves you, you get that knee-jerk reaction and say it right back.”

“I do not.” I feign ignorance when I know she’s one hundred percent spot-on.

“Dude, she’s right,” Pauly interjects with the tip of his bottle before meeting Stella’s hand in a high five. “You get pussywhipped and cave in to saying it back.”

“It just comes out. I mean, what am I supposed to do? Just ignore that the chick’s said it and hurt her feelings because I don’t respond?”

“Jesus,” both of them say in unison as Stella slumps back in her seat and slides me a sidelong glance. “It’s gonna hurt her feelings a helluva lot more when you say it and don’t mean it, Romeo.”

I blow out a long breath and swallow the smart-ass comment on my tongue with a sip of beer.

“You guys are too funny,” Pauly says as he rises. “’Nother round?”

We nod and watch him walk off, and now that he’s gone, I look over to Stella who’s eyeing me once again. “What?”

“Nothing.” Silence falls between us for a moment before she continues. “I think it’s cute, you know. Most guys are scared of saying those three words.”

“Well, according to you and Pauly, I say them too much.”

“I’m just giving you shit,” she muses, head on the back of the chair, eyes tilted up to the ceiling. “I like that it’s easy for you.”

“I guess the real question, though, is if I can say it so easily, how will I know when it’s really real?” It’s amazing the things you’ll think to talk about when you’re bored out of your mind.

“You’ll know it’s real when you hesitate.”

I angle my head and meet her eyes. “What do you mean?”

“If the words are so easy for you to say when it’s in reflex, then the first time you ever hesitate, when you don’t say ‘I love you’ back immediately because you’ll be so overwhelmed that she said it to you… well, I guess then you’ll know it’s real.”

I stare at her, not sure if I believe her or not, but since I have nothing else to think about, the notion settles in as I lift the beer to my lips and rest my head on the back of the chair. “Food for thought,” I murmur.

A noise in the hallway pulls me from my dream and the moment I’d completely forgotten. My dreamlike state lasts momentarily, and I hold on to the recollection of Stella since the memories are coming less and less frequently now.

Rolling onto my side to avoid the bright light that floods the room, I’m struck by how perfectly it frames Beaux’s body in a halo as she sleeps. I visually trace the lines of her face and the sheet covering her body and take her all in. She’s so feisty when she’s awake that it’s interesting to have a moment to watch her in sleep. And it’s not like we haven’t woken up beside each other before, but this time just seems so very different.

Good different.

The first time you hesitate…

I push the train of thought aside – how both Stella’s wisdom and now Beaux lying beside me make me hesitate in so many ways – and try to redirect my mind to where I want my thoughts to wander: my family. I wonder how my sister, Rylee, is doing with her new husband and her band of motley boys that she loves more than life. I find myself guessing at how many times my mom has gone to pick up the phone to call me, only to hang it back up because she doesn’t want to annoy me even though I tell her to call anytime and that I’ll answer when I can. And then I get that little pang deep down as I wonder if my dad has found a new buddy to join him in sitting on the rocks of the jetty to fish since he’d gotten a little too used to my being home over the four months. We both found it therapeutic sitting there with fishing poles in our hands, him in having his only son home again for the longest bout in a decade and me in having his company. With my father, I didn’t have to say a word, and yet he knew exactly what to do to help me deal with Stella’s death.

Then Beaux makes this soft moan deep in her throat that tugs on every ounce of testosterone in my body. And it’s not like I’m not sitting here with morning wood; I’d be more than willing to relieve the pressure and feed the ache, but at the same time there is something so perfect about just being lazy with her. Like we’re lying together after an incredible first date instead of in the Middle East in some crappy hotel with squeaky bedsprings, waiting for the next story to hit.

Shit, even after leading into another morning broadcast in the States and not another mention of what happened in the hallway, we fell into bed exhausted but not too tired to go another round, a little slower, a little softer than the first time. And then complete and utter exhaustion took over, but damn, I’ll take exhaustion when it comes at the hands and thighs of a beautiful woman.

She shifts in bed, my eyes taking in the span of golden skin that calls for me to touch it, and when I look back up, I meet her sleepy eyes and shy smile. “Mmm, good morning,” she murmurs, shifting her pillow some so that she can lie on her side and look eye to eye with me.

“Good morning, sleepyhead.”

She closes her eyes drowsily for a slow blink and yawns. I laugh at how tired she seems when I feel so invigorated after a killer story, great pickups by other networks, and, more important, the incredible night we spent together.