Page 6 of Fools Rush Flynn

He shakes his head. “You’re not the paranoid type.”

His words are stated as a fact.

Like he knows me.

I mean we do know each other, but we haven’t been around one another in years. He knew me as a teenager, but his statement rings true. I’ve never been overly suspicious about anything. Except maybe my cousin’s moral compass.

I watch him step into the kitchen and grab a glass from a cabinet, then fill it with water at the fridge. He downs the entire thing. Watching his throat work to swallow is mesmerizing and it occurs to me that I’m staring at him.

It’s hard not to. He’s beautiful. Tall and broad without being overly bulky. Just perfectly honed muscles, initially from high school sports and then the Army. His dark hair is longer than the last time I saw him. Longer on the top and trimmed tightly to his head above his ears.

I want to strip his clothes off him and catalog every scar and tattoo. I know he has some of both. He had stitches on his arm and neck at our wedding ceremony and he mentioned something about some new ink.

Oh, who am I kidding? I want to see him naked because he’s so sexy and I want to ride him like a pony.

But that is not what this marriage is about.

“Everything okay, Temple?” he asks.

He caught me staring, so I give him a small smile. “Yeah, just lost in thought, I guess.” Thoughts about how amazing your tight ass would look sans jeans and boxers. If he even wears boxers. “What kind of underwear do you wear?” I blurt.

Temple Thorne: excellent at ice breakers. Now available for your next party.

“What?” he asks, a frown creasing his forehead.

“Well, I am your wife.” I shrug. “Just seems like something I should know.”

He shoves off of the kitchen counter and walks towards me. He’s all casual prowling grace. That’s a thing, right?

“You going to tell me about your underwear?” he asks.

Ugh, why was that hot? “I don’t think there are as many options for women.”

“Inaccurate, but we’ll move on.”

“I’m a no-frills cotton kind of girl,” I admit. “Pretty low key and plain.”

“Boxer briefs. And I like ones with nerdy stuff on them.” His arms cross over his chest, and I swear he’s smirking at me.

“Like protractors and calculators?”

He laughs. “Not exactly. Though I do have some with math equations on them.”

“I never knew they had novelty underwear for y’all.”

“We’ve come a long way since tighty-whities.”

That makes me laugh because what are we even talking about? I’m so weird sometimes.

He comes over and sits on the coffee table facing me. “Okay, now that we’ve gotten the awkward underwear conversation out of the way, tell me what’s going on.”

“Just my cousin being his obnoxious self,” I say.

“I need more words, Temple.”

I snort. “No one has ever asked me for more words.”

He taps his knee against mine. “Your grandmother, is she still…?”