He drew back, his finger seductively trailing the line of her jaw. “You have,” he whispered, “thirty-two seconds to get outside and take your clothes off.”
She wasted ten of those seconds getting out of the truck, and then dawdled away an awful lot of time watching him unfold the blanket. She was smiling as he spread the blanket on the tall grasses next to the pond. He loved that smile, would happily have done cartwheels to banish the pinched look around her eyes that had haunted her since her mother’s call. Bett was so rarely moody. Given any chance at all, she squeezed the joy from life, and shared it.
Whatever anxiety she was feeling, they would handle it. At the moment, he just wanted to see the mischievous spark back in her eyes. He wasn’t disappointed. He paused briefly to study his wife appreciatively. She was wearing an old yellow T-shirt of his; its shoulder seams flopped almost to her elbows, its hem barely covered her fanny, and not a bump of a breast showed in the folds of fabric. Her old jeans led down to bare feet. His lady was at her sexiest, nonetheless. Softness was the issue. The softness of silky yellow hair by moonlight, the soft pastel of the T-shirt, the softer glow of her skin.
He unbuttoned and pushed off her jeans himself, since she was being so damned slow. She raised her arms; he tugged off the T-shirt.
It was Bett’s turn to watch when she’d settled on the blanket. Zach’s profile was outlined against the night sky, and a shiver of anticipation raced down her spine. Zach was all dark gold, his chest smooth and sculpted, strength and control part of his body, part of his every movement. He tossed his shirt on the grass, then slowly slid his belt from its belt loops, facing her. When he unsnapped the single button on his jeans, the small sound seemed to echo crazily in the night. In a moment, he’d skimmed off the pants, and moved toward her in the darkness, naked and tall.