Yes, she’ll stay.
Yes, she’ll forgive me.
Yes, she’ll be mine. For keeps.
She’s working an event until four today and won’t be back at the house until four-thirty, so I kill time by swinging into the flower shop. I plan to pick up the same flowers I bought her for the wedding, but the store is out of calla lilies. The prettiest flowers left are the roses, but red roses seem cheesy and impersonal for some reason. I almost go with the white, but they remind me of my grandmother’s funeral.
So, in the end I grab a dozen of the yellow and head for the house.
I’m still early, but that’ll give me time to get the roses in a vase, get out of my holster, and clean up a little before Aria gets back.
I pull into the driveway and jog up the front steps, so sure the house will be empty that I don’t bother knocking or ringing the doorbell. When the door slams shut behind me and Aria screams, I’m so startled I almost drop the roses and reach for my gun.
“Nash?” Aria cries out.
“Yeah, it’s me,” I say, my heart still racing.
“Oh my god, you scared me!” she calls from the kitchen with a nervous laugh. “We finished up early, but I didn’t expect you for a half hour!”
“Sorry,” I say, moving through the living room. “I didn’t think you’d be back until…”
I round the corner into the kitchen and my words die in my mouth, shriveling up and floating away, leaving me with no clue what I’d been planning to say.
It’s impossible to hold onto the capacity for speech with Aria looking like that.
“You like?” she asks with a grin as she props one hand on her hip, emphasizing her curves.
Her barely covered curves.
I nod, my eyes flicking up and down, from her wild hair loose around her shoulders, to the white corset cradling her breasts, to the lace panties and garters holding up stockings that stretch down her long legs before disappearing into red stiletto heels.
Red heels on Red.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything sexier.
“I was going for wedding night take two, but I couldn’t find my white shoes,” she says, lifting one leg and twirling an ankle.
The heel circles in the air; my mouth goes dry.
“I’m all about the red,” I say.
“I heard that about you.” She turns, treating me to a view of her lace-covered bottom that makes the air in the house suddenly feel too warm.
“That’s why I made red velvet cake. I still need to ice a few flowers, but…” She glances back at me with an expectant look.
It takes me a second to realize she’s pointing to something on the counter by the stove, and another, longer second, to force my eyes away from my insanely sexy wife.
When I do, my jaw drops.
“Is that…” I trail off, shaking my head in disbelief as I circle around the counter. “Did you make that?”
“Of course, I made it,” she says, as if whipping up a three-tier wedding cake covered in paisley iced swirls with pearl centers is something she does every afternoon. “You think I’d let someone else make my wedding cake?”
I stop. “You made us a wedding cake?”
“We never had a wedding cake. We never had a wedding night, either. Now that we’ve decided to stay married, I figured we should have both, right?”
My relief is so intense my knees buckle. I brace myself on the counter with one hand, taking deeper breaths, shocked by the depth of my gratitude, and so grateful I close my eyes and send out a quick prayer.
A prayer of thanks for this second chance.
This life. This woman.
“We have decided to stay married,” she adds, a tremor in her voice. “Haven’t we?”
“God, yes, we have.” I drop the flowers on the counter and reach for her, dragging her against me, hugging her so tight her breath rushes out. “Yes, yes, yes,” I whisper into the crook of her neck as she wraps her arms around me and holds me just as tight.
“You had me worried for a second.”
“I was so relieved I thought I was going to pass out,” I say, laughing as I kiss the top of her head. “I’m so sorry, Aria. I never should have left. It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Very stupid,” she agrees, kissing my neck, making me shiver.
“But it did convince me of one thing.” I pull back far enough to catch her gaze. “Without you, I’m no good to anyone. I don’t care what we have to go through to be together. I’m all in.”
“I heard you talked to my dad,” she says. “Thank you for that. I know he isn’t easy.”
“He isn’t,” I agree. “But we had a good talk, and we’re going to play nice from now on. You’re too important to both of us to do anything else.”