“Good means good.” I drank from my glass, watching him over the rim.
“And you’re saying it’s a good thing I’m falling in love with you?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Sooo, you feel the same for me?”
“Let me think on it.” I rolled my eyes upward. “Um, yeah.”
“Woo!” Magnum fisted his hands, banging them lightly on the table. “Yeessss!”
I laughed. “Now that we’ve cleared that up.”
“See? Wearefated to be together.” Magnus waggled his index finger at me. “What we’re going through is bonding us for life.”
“Maybe. I just know that once this is over, I don’t want you to leave my life.”
“Nor will I.”
“Good.”
“There you go with the ‘good’ again.”
“I guess there’s so much about you that’s good for me. You’re smart, you’re protective, you’re cute as a bug’s ear.”
“Cute as awhat?”
“Do you want to hear your list of attributes or not?”
Magnus grinned. “I’m all ears.”
“I love your kindness,” I went on, feeling a tickle deep in my stomach. “Deep down, you were never your father’s son. You hated being forced to kidnap me, I saw it then, but it never really sank in. Not all the way. You’d have given your life for mine, wouldn’t you?”
He met my gaze. “I would have then. I would now.”
“Maybe we are fated to be together.” I sighed, pushed my plate away, gazing through the diner’s window to the cars passing by, the late tourists shopping. “I never thought you’d be my type, but here we are.”
“What is your type?”
“I thought the alpha male, me Tarzan, you Jane sort of guy.”
Magnus blinked. “Good grief. That’s so yesterday.”
“Yeah, it is. In retrospect, I don’t think I could have fallen for a guy like that.” I chuckled. “The moment he’d pull an alpha moment on me, I’d punch him between his eyes.”
“Just as you should.”
“Nor do I think you’d fall for a weak-willed, whining female who doesn’t know her own mind.”
Magnus shook his head. “It’s your toughness and fierce independence that attracted me to you. Still does.”
I toyed with a french fry for a moment, then dropped it. “Will we make it, Magnus? Are we going to die?”
“Nope.” He smiled. The gleam I saw in his eyes sent a shiver through me. “We will not. I’ll make damn sure of that.”
***
My belly’s tingling increased by the time we returned to our room. Still, I had no real idea how to initiate intimacy. Striding in ahead of Magnus, I thought to turn and kiss him.Does that make me a brazen hussy? So what if it does? He might like me making the first move.
