I felt myself perk up. “Where?”
With both hands at about chest level, he motioned me towardhim. “Here.”
I eyed him and blinked, and that only made himgrinmore.
“Come here and we can talkaboutsex.”
My entire body went hot and red. Definitely red. I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if my eyeballs had bulged out of their sockets, and all I could do was laugh. “This sounds like the kind of moments my mom used to warn Jasmine about when she started having boyfriends, and she worried she’d end uppregnant.”
“She didn’t have those talkswithyou?”
I scowled at him and shook my head. “No. Not once. That actually makes me feel kind of crappy now that I think about it. She never had the sex talk with me. I’m twenty-four years old and I’m stillwaiting.”
Aaron laughed. “I’ll tell you allaboutit.”
I groaned, and that only made him laugh harder. “You’re awful. You’re doing this to me onpurpose.”
He shook his head, grinning so wide that dimple of his could have been a star. “You know I am. I know, Ruby girl. I know you. This is on you, as long as you know I’m not going anywhere. I’m not giving you up. I was ready to go fight those guys you were dating if it would’ve gottenserious.”
Maybe it was wrong of me to flash him the biggest smile I was capable of, but Ididn’tcare.
He tipped his face down, his expression suddenly going serious. “This isn’t for this weekend. This isn’t for the rest of the month.” My expression must have been skeptical because he motioned me toward him again, his face solemn. “You don’t make a dress in a day,right?”
With a lump in my throat, I nodded. “Usually.”
“Your best ones take you hundreds of hours to make,don’tthey?”
“Yes.” Where was he goingwiththis?
“A business isn’t successful overnight. You don’t get promoted in a week. Everything takes time. Everything that is important and good and worthwhile, takes time. I’m not the kind of man who doesn’t know that. Just looking at you makes me happy. Listening to you makes me happy. So come over here if you want, but only ifyouwant.”
He was killing me. Maybe he already had and this was some alternate dimension. Or heaven. I could see this being heaven if Aaron was saying what he was saying and all the arrows pointed at me. Maybe I was naïve. Maybe I’d been incredibly stupid in my life inthepast.
But I wasn’t going tobenow.
So I got up and went to stand in front of him while my heart beat, beat, beat, frantic, frantic,frantic.
And Aaron smiled at me as he scooted to sit straight in his chair, his hands going to my waist, and he pulled me into him. My butt going to one of his thighs, my hip going next to his, my shoulder making friends with the one he calledhisown.
For the first time in my freaking life, I was sitting on a man’s lap. I’d thought about this moment a dozen times in my past, but each time had been with someone who didn’t look anything like the one next to me. I’d thought, back then, that nothing would have made me happier than sitting on this other man’s lap and being the object of hisaffection.
That’s what I’dthought.
And I would’ve been a moron. Anidiot.
It was like…this momentwas what I’d been waiting for my entire life. Like anything else, if there would have been anything else, would have been a pale, pathetic imitation. It would’ve been a drop in a bucket that I would neverremember.
But this, this wasnotthat.
Sitting on Aaron’s lap on the deck of his beach house, with a handful of stars out, and the sounds of people on the beach… it was just one of a dozen other memories I’d already made with Aaron that I would neverforget.
I’d hung out hundreds of times with other people doing things that had been fun in the moment, but I couldn’t recall anything but a vague, hazy summary of the event. And maybe that’s how I knew this was something else. How everything with Aaron was different. It was special. In my gut, as we lived in the moment, I knew I could never or would never forget the way he smiled at me as I sat on his lap. How his hand felt on the side of my thigh. How his eyes looked at me the way I’d always wanted to be looked at, like my heart was surrounded by bees and my skin covered inbutterflies.
I could never, everforgetit.
“What are youthinking?”
Pressing my lips together, I chewed on the inside of my cheek for a second as I swept my eyes all over his face and said, “Aboutyou.”
