Change of subject. “I want to take you out on a date.”
“You already took me out on the most wonderful first date a girl could imagine.”
She shifts in my lap, and I hiss through my teeth when she slides across my aching length. Her eyes alight with mischief, and I smack her backside before she has a chance to start grinding down on me again and I come in my pants like a pubescent virgin.
“Behave,” I warn her, otherwise Mrs. Shepardson is going to see more than she bargained for. “I mean a traditional date where you wear a sexy, little dress, I arrive on your doorstep with a bouquet of the most expensive white roses I can find, and then put every move on you throughout the night hoping I’ll get lucky.”
“You’ll most definitely get lucky, especially if you bring me purple tulips.”
I kiss the sensuous jut of her chin. “My woman likes tulips. Noted.”
She shakes her head as if coming out of a daydream. “I’m still having trouble believing this is real.”
My hands span the dip of her lumbar. “Why?”
She lowers her head but not before I see the blush that illuminates her face. “I used to have such a major crush on you when I was a teenager.”
I both love and hate hearing that. If only I’d have seen it back then.
Wanting to keep things light, I scoff in mock offense. “Usedto?”
Her pretty hazel eyes pitch to the side. “You know what I mean. You were my ultimate boy fantasy. My greatest wish that somehow, miraculously, has come true. I don’t trust myself to fully believe it yet.”
I don’t respond to that. I can’t. If I do, the guilt will pour out because it should have been her all along.
Instead, I show Douglass with my kiss that she’s my wish come true as well.
Chapter 42
Oh, god. I think I’m dying.
Folded in half at the waist like a collapsed marionette, I saw in gulps of air as sweat pours off me like I’m the human reincarnation of Niagara Falls. This sucks. It’s sheer agony dipped in pure torture rolled into a burrito of misery.
“Can’t stop now. We’ve got one more mile to go.”
I don’t even raise my head to squint death daggers at him.
Fuck you, Jordan Hammond.
Still in my bent position, his happy, bouncing running shoes come into view as he jogs in place, and I would snarl at them if I could catch my breath. I learned a valuable lesson this morning. Never tell Jordan anything ever again.
When we woke up at the ass-crack of the middle of the night to take Natalie to the airport, Jordan told me to pack some workout clothes to take with us. This is where my big, fat mouth comes in. He’d remembered that I said I wanted to run a 5K. After he explained how he participated in the Pink 5K for Breast Cancer Awareness every May and would love for me to join him and Harper this year, there was no way I could say no.
I mean, five kilometers is only a little over three miles, right? I could do that. Easy peasy.
Tell that to my burning lungs, queasy stomach, and the two wacky inflatable tube men attached to my hip sockets instead of legs.
I hold up a finger while trying to pull myself upright using muscles that don’t want to work anymore.
“I… hate… you,” I wheeze out when I see he’s not even sweating. Not one drop. Nope. The too-gorgeous-for-his-own good Adonis glistens under the early morning sun like an oiled-up Baywatch lifeguard.
He flashes me his dimples and does that very sexy pulling the T-shirt over his head move that guys are born knowing how to do, and my frantic heart rate double times when I get an eyeful of his tanned, bare chest. Okay, maybe jogging with him has a few benefits. I’d wake up bright and early and put myself through this godawful torture if I got to run withthatbeside me every morning.
Wiping non-existent sweat from his brow with his shirt, he leans in and kisses me, his lips warm and in contrast to the cool, dewy air that shivers over my damp body.
“You’re doing great, baby. Two miles down already,” says the man who runs five miles every morning.
Two miles? I don’t believe that at all. It’s felt like a hundred.
