“Of course I’m in love with you.” He chuckled again, his eyes twinkling. “What the hell do you think has been going on here?”
I blushed again, but this time, I met his gaze with a shy smile. “I don’t know. I mean, there’s a difference between loving someone and being in love, between dating someone and actually falling for them.”
Add a baby into that equation, and things start to get pretty complicated, something inside me reminded me.
A sudden kiss interrupted those thoughts, a kiss so warm and soft and sweet that I had to open my eyes to make sure it was really happening.
“I assure you that I know the difference, and I know I am in love with you, Abigail Wilder.” His breath tickled my cheeks as he gazed deep into my eyes. “We both know I fell a long time ago.”
A warm flutter stirred in my chest, and I grinned in spite of myself. Then, just as quickly as the smile came, it melted away from my face, and I gave him a sarcastic roll of my eyes. “All right, all right. You don’t have to keep saying it. I mean unless you want to.”
A shrieking explosion of giggles burst out of me as his fingers dug into my sides. There was a flash of golden hair, and in the next second, he was on top of me, pressing me into the mattress as he alternated between tickling, kissing, and declaring his love. “Body and soul,” he said before another kiss. “Head over heels,” he said, then kissed me again. “And whatever other cheesy fucking way you want me to say it.” He pinned my wrists above my head and kissed me long and slow, his eyes glowing liquid blue in the afternoon sun. “I love you, Abby. I’ll say it as many times as you’re willing to hear it.”
All the air rushed out of me, and I froze in the heat of his adoring gaze.
Tell him. Now’s the time.
I knew, but I just couldn’t. I had never been happier than I was in that moment, and I couldn’t bear to watch it all crumble away beneath the cruel attack of the unspoken truth. Instead, I lowered my eyes quickly to his chest before looking up with a distracting grin. “I can’t believe you just grabbed me like that.” My skin flushed red hot just at the memory, and I shook my head, wearing an incredulous smile.
He raised a single eyebrow, looking delicious enough to eat. One hand snaked beneath the sheets to nudge my thighs apart as he set out to finish what he started. “Does this make me whipped, huh?”
Shit! I knew that joke would come back to bite me.
“You know I was just kidding, right?” I leaned into the mattress as far as I could, gazing up with a nervous grin as he towered over me. “I don’t actually think you’re—”
I shrieked aloud as his head disappeared beneath the sheets to assault me, letting out a playful growl. My head rolled back in mindless ecstasy, and I gasped for breath before I shrieked once more.
Chapter 7
Just a few hours later, we were finally ready for breakfast. The sun had already begun to set over the western horizon, but that didn’t stop us from setting up on the front porch with two plates of pancakes and bacon. The maple syrup was not far behind.
Nick drenched his plate in a lake of sugary goodness.
I smirked. “Sugar craving?”
“What? I can stop at any time.”
I giggled and took a large bite of bacon, watching him discreetly out of the corner of my eye. It was still hard to get used to that side of him. He was so playful, so affectionate, so unrestrained, and so down-to-Earth that the general public never would have believed it if I told them.
During my two years of working with him, I’d discovered that Nick was fun and friendly, but there were certain lines the two of us never would have thought of crossing, certain things we never would have even thought, let alone said. There were certain walls we never would have let down, even with each other. Now, all of that was rapidly changing.
The man sitting beside me didn’t seem to have a care in the world. He just sat there, with bare feet, bed-tousled hair, and a shirt that was slightly too big for him, rolled up at the sleeves. He grinned like the proverbial kid in the proverbial candy store as he snacked happily on a ridiculously tall of very soaked pancakes, and I was absolutely smitten with him.
“You need to put that lusty stare of yours away,” he teased, flashing a sideways grin. “I have a girlfriend now, and she wouldn’t approve. Or should I say wife? Supposedly, we eloped in Peru.”
I rolled my eyes and watched as he lifted his hand to wave at a couple who’d stopped to gawk at him. When they whipped out a camera with a pleading request, he stood obediently and leaned between them, wearing a practiced smile and balance his sticky plate in the other hand.
A faint grin spread across my face as I watched the couple take shot after shot, both grabbing the back of his loose shirt as if it was somehow acceptable to manhandle him. They seemed to be making frantic lists of which friends needed to see the photos, the evidence of their star-struck encounter. The wife, ignoring her husband, even stretched up on her tiptoes to kiss Nick on the cheek.
It wasn’t until I heard Nick say my name that I realized they were talking to me.
“I’m sorry? What was that?” I set my plate down and stood, wearing a smile that I hoped was more gracious-looking than it felt. “You want me to take one of the three of you?”
The couple chattered quickly, in Portuguese, shaking their heads.
Nick flashed me a crooked smile. “They want a picture of the four of us—them, me, and...my wife.”
Wait. Wife? Wow, the entire world thinks we’re married.