Then she fiddled with her hair—up or down? She didn’t know. Makeup or not? She didn’t know. So she tried a few different looks before scrapping them all and deciding to go minimalist. Hair down and some lip gloss. Would he approve?

Ack! She didn’t know that, either. She just had to hope.

And then, with a knock at the door, it didn’t matter anymore. He’d come—that was all that mattered. Taking a deep breath to steady the wild beat of her heart, Della flipped on the porch light and turned the handle.

The sight that greeted her made her ovaries throb. Tucker looming large in jeans and his Jack’s T-shirt, a smile parting his scruffy whiskers, his dimples bling-blinging.

“Hey,” he said, leaning one big shoulder into the doorframe. He looked at her like he had earlier, lingering and hungry, and for a second Della thought she might just disgrace herself with a spontaneous orgasm.

She didn’t, but things certainly twinged a little on the wild side down there.

“Hey,” she returned, overwhelmed by the stirrings of her body and his height and his breadth and the sheer bulk of him. The aroma of beer wafted toward her, and also jasmine—from the bushes out front—and it was heady. He was heady.

Flicking a glance over his shoulder, she searched the street. “You didn’t drive?”

“I…thought it might be more circumspect to walk from Jack’s.”

Ah. Yes. Della nodded slowly. He was probably right. It was probably best not to have his pickup parked outside her place, and the bar was only a ten-minute walk from Della’s house.

“You don’t have a gift, I see?”

He laughed, and it was rich and deep and stroked against her highly sensitized skin like crushed velvet. “Sorry, I’ve been a little busy today.” But that laugh, that big ol’ smile told her he had innate gifts and he knew how to use them. “I’ll bring something tomorrow night.”

Della beamed. He was already talking about tomorrow night.

“Well?” he prompted. “Are you going to invite me in? Show me what you’ve done with the place since this morning.”

Realizing she’d been standing motionless in the doorway in full view of the neighborhood, like an idiot, she grabbed his hand, murmured “Entre vous,” then tugged.

His smile strummed at the muscles slung between her hip bones as he followed her inside, and her breath hitched as the door clicked shut. But if she thought that would be his cue to start ravaging her, she was sorely mistaken.

“So,” he said, his voice low as his body fitted in behind hers, close but not touching, heat enveloping hers, cranking up that hum a little more. “Give me the tour.”

She gave a husky laugh. “You saw everything this morning.” And she was way more interested in showing him her everything.