It was all I’d thought about since I saw Weston in Starbucks and knew it was my sign to leave DayGlow. I still didn’t know what to tell my husband. How do you explain being a supermodel who lived in a penthouse suite, had your own driver, and has nothing in the bank when you should have millions? There was no good way to explain it other than the truth. And that would cost me my marriage.
“Nothing’s wrong,” I whispered, my tears wet against his bare chest. “How could it be? I’m here with you.”
“Then why are you crying?” he murmured.
“I don’t know.”
“It’s been a hard couple of days,” he whispered, his thumb tracing slow lines across my back. “James will be okay. Willow, too. And Maggie.” We’d found out today that Maggie might have to repeat her family medicine rotation. She was crushed.
“I know,” I said, pulling myself together. “I’m fine.” I made my voice lighter. “I just… I think my period’s about to start. Hormones be hormoning.”
“She gets weepy right before her period. Noted.” He tapped his temple and then brushed a tear from my cheek. “You know what would make you feel better?”
“What?”
He shimmied his chest. “A little lovin’ from your firefighting man.”
I laughed through my tears. “Are you going to do a pole dance for me?”
He snorted. “I can’t believe you think I would do something that smutty.”
I froze. Had I offended him? “Sorry,” I whispered.
But then he let out a growl that probably woke half the house and flipped me over, pinning me on my back. Which made me scream and wake the other half.
With my hands trapped above my head, he gazed into my eyes. “We are not erotic romance, Jules.Weare the greatest love story of all time.”
At those words, everything softened in him and me.
His lips found mine. “We’ve got all the best tropes,” he murmured. “A gorgeous teenage girl crushing on a homely boy from across the country.”
“Homely?” I laughed. “Please. And technically, I was crushing on your voice.”
“Shhhhh,” he ordered. “I was homely, but then I had a glow-up. That’s the makeover trope. Then there’s the celebrity crush trope—me crushing on you. And when we met in that restaurant and?—”
“I think you mean that bar.”
He shushed me again. “It was love at first sight.”
I tilted my head to the side. “It wasn’t love at first sight for me.”
“Ouch.”
“It was love at first ‘I’m saving myself for my wife.’”
He went still for a few seconds.
“Really?” A slow grin spread across his face.
“Really,” I said, not smiling at all. “I mean, I thought you were the best-looking man I’d ever seen, plus the voice. But those words are what did it.”
“Nice,” he said, puffing up a little. “I do have a pretty great voice.”
“The greatest,” I said. “You’d put the best smut narrators to shame.”
“Hmm. New career options.”
I pulled his forehead to mine. “Don’t even think about it.”
