Page 120 of Filthy Fae

“All right, then,” he said after a minute. “I appreciate you letting me do that for you. It meant a lot to me, even if I didn’t show it the right way.”

“I know you’ll be there when I need you,” I said. “Even if I have to get a little bossy to make it happen.”

He snorted. “You can say that again.”

“Thin ice,” I warned. “And besides, just because you’re not a smooth-talking romantic doesn’t mean you can’t be trained. That’s what I’m here for.”

“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”

“Hmm, I seem to remember you saying I needed to be trained to not be such a virgin when I showed up.”

“I don’t think I said it like that.”

I shrugged as he ushered me into the shop, his hand on the small of my back. “If you made me something pretty, then you don’t need training,” I said. “You’re already a big mushy romantic at heart.”

“I didn’t,” Waylon growled. “And you’re making me rethink the gift.”

“You better not. I like pretty things, especially if you made it yourself.” I laughed and followed him to the back of the shop.

“More like rebuilt,” he said.

We stopped and looked at each other a minute. “Well?” I asked. “What’s the gift?”

He gestured at his T-Bird. “That’s the gift.”

“It’s in the car?” I asked, knowing he couldn’t mean what I thought he meant.

“It is the car.”

Okay, so he did mean what I thought he meant. I thought my knees would give out and I’d faint dead away on the concrete floor.

“Waylon…” I said. “I don’t…I can’t…I don’t even know how to drive. And you can’t just give me your car. I mean, you can. It’s your car. Obviously. Of course, you already know it’s your car, that’s why you’re giving it to me. Actually I don’t know why you’re giving it to me. You’ve met me, right? I can’t make it to the end of the cow field without having some kind of catastrophe befall me. What am I going to do in a car?”

“I’ll teach you to drive,” Waylon said. “I told you I would.”

“You do know that I got your side-by-side stuck in the cow pasture the other day, right?”

“You were also talking about being lonely,” he said. “Needing friends.”

“So, I’m supposed to name the car and sit in her when I’m lonely?”

“If you’re living in Wyoming, you need to know how to drive,” he said. “We don’t have cabs around here. And you’ve mentioned before that you don’t like being stuck here on the ranch, not able to go anywhere without one of us driving you. I should have taught you a long time ago. I guess I kept waiting for…”

I put my hands on my hips. “If you say you were waiting for me to run off, so help me God, I will hurt you, Waylon Westling.”

“Then I won’t say it.”

“Waylon…” I stepped forward and grabbed his big dumb head in both hands. “I’m never going to leave you, you complete idiot. I gave you my word, and my body, and my heart, and my soul. What else do you need to be sure?”

His Adam’s apple bobbed, and his hands circled my waist. “It’s enough,” he said. “It’s more than enough. It’s more than I deserve.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “It’s exactly what you deserve.”

He smiled a little, brushing his thumb across my lips. “Happy Christmas, Amber.”

“Thanks, but…I can’t accept this. You’ve been working on it for ages. It’s too much.”

“It’s not too much,” he said gruffly. “You’ve given me more.”