Page 15 of Wild Hope

Joel didn’t bother replying to her.Not because he was ignoring her, but because she’d made the same comment several times already and he had reassured her that he made more than enough money to spoil her.

Considering she had never been spoiled a day in her life, it went without saying she had no clue how to accept his generosity.

Joel walked to the island separating the kitchenette from the living room and found the room service menu.“Let’s order and then we can chat while we wait for the food.”

They’d had eaten a large lunch with her family prior to dropping them off at the train station, so she wasn’t really hungry.

“Are you starving?”she asked.

He shook his head.

“Then how would you feel about pushing off dinner until later.Maybe,” Andi drew in a slow breath, debating the wisdom of what she was about to say.

“Maybe?”he prompted.

“Maybe we could skip dinner completely and just order a midnight snack.Much later.”

Joel’s eyes darkened with a hunger that had nothing to do with food.

While it had been a wonderful weekend, it had also been an experiment in extreme patience.After their first date in Baltimore, she and Joel made out in the back of his limo for hours.He had instructed the driver to keep going until he texted him to stop, then put up the privacy shield and kissed her senseless.

Those kisses had awakened something inside her that wouldn’t go back to sleep, but there had been no opportunity to expand on it this weekend, due to her mom and Dylan’s presence.

This was the first time they’d been alone since her arrival in New York, and she was finished waiting.

“Andi,” he said, stepping closer to her.His hands landed on her waist as he drew her to him, giving her a kiss that proved his patience had been tested as well.

She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, parting her lips and deepening the kiss.

When they broke away for air, his lips brushed her cheek.“I’ve been wanting to do that since you stepped off that train Friday afternoon.”

The two of them had stolen at least a hundred too short, too quick, too unsatisfying secret kisses over the course of the weekend, none of them coming close to the sort of intimacy she longed for with him.

“Missed you,” she murmured against his lips when they began kissing again.Perhaps that was a silly thing to say considering they hadn’t known each other long, but she had felt the distance between them intensely after he left Baltimore.

Andi had never known true love.Sure, she’d felt infatuation and affection and plenty of lust in her twenty-six years, but love had always eluded her.

For the same reason most things did.

There simply weren’t enough hours in the day.Dates were few and far between and while she’d never given up the hope of finding someone and falling passionately in love, lately, she’d started wondering if it would simply be easier to settle for someone she liked, for something more akin to companionship than a real relationship.She’d dated plenty of guys who were nice enough, though they didn’t set her world on fire or make her heart race.After so many years of looking for and not finding love, she had seriously considered cutting her losses and lowering the bar.

Now that she’d met Joel, she could see how stupid that thought was.

How on earth could she settle for anything less than…God…than this?

This dizzy, giddy, overwhelmingly incredible feeling.

“I missed you too,” he said, his words making her far-too-happy.“I know I said we’d talk, but how about we table that.Maybe we could chat during our midnight snack?”he asked with a wicked grin.

She didn’t respond to that with words.Instead, she grasped his hand, leading him to the master bedroom.The maid had come through, changing the sheets on the king-sized bed per her request.

Yeah.

She might have been hoping tonight would end exactly like this.

Now that Joel had encouraged her to start dreaming big, she didn’t seem able to stop.

Andi led him to the side of the bed, then turned to face him.