She reaches a hand behind her and grips the edge of the table like she’s trying to anchor in place.
“Dammit, Jordan. You can’t keep saying stuff like that to me.”
Now it’s my turn to ask, “Why not?” as I slowly walk toward her.
She looks slightly panicked when I come closer.
“Because you’re my Wishing Tree.”
Our bodies touch when I reach around her to grab something off the table.
“I have no idea what that means, but Harper did say earlier that I was your unicorn.”
She giggles. “You don’t even want to know what she said to me in the car when I got here.”
“Something completely crazy and slightly inappropriate, I presume.”
I hold up the red silk jacquard tie I took from the table. Douglass studies it with curiosity.
“What’s that?”
I run it between the fingers of my hands, stretching the material out. “This? I’m going to blindfold you.”
She stays my hands when I lift the tie up to her eyes. “Are you going to explain that?”
“Nope.”
“Is this a kink I should know about?”
Laughing, I reply, “No unusual kinks, I swear. But if you want to—”
She slaps her hand over my mouth. “Don’t finish that sentence.”
I kiss her palm, and she drops her hand.
“Consider this a first date experiment. Trust me.”
And that’s exactly why I’m doing this. The crazy idea came to me in the kitchen when I was finishing making the apple walnut salad. Telling her to trust me is pointless. The words meaningless. I need toshowher that she can trust me.
She peers up at me, unsure, and I wait for her to work through things. When she doesn’t say no, I mentally perform a fist pump in celebration.
“If you don’t like anything I do, say stop and I’ll stop.” Lifting the tie to her eyes, I take my time knotting it in the back.
“What, no safe word? I could say banana instead,” she jokes, but her heart is pounding so hard, I can actually hear it.
Playfully, I nip the tip of her nose with my teeth and that sweet giggle of hers makes another appearance. Bennett had mentioned that he never heard her laugh much except around Harper and Mason. She’s laughed at least three times with me tonight, and damn, if it isn’t the most wonderful sound I’ve ever heard.
“Stop will do. You ready?”
Her hand trembles slightly when I take it and pull her over to stand next to the table.
“I’m ready.”
“Can you see anything?” I ask, waving a hand in front of her face.
“Blind as a bat.”
“Don’t peek.”
