Page 43 of The Undercover Billionaire's Baby

“I can’t wait.”

Alice whooped, and I shushed her, but Brad had heard.

“Tell Alice hello,” he said. “But she can’t come on our date.”

A warm feeling swept through me: our date. Me and him. Friday couldn’t come soon enough.

Brad had slipped out when I went to get ready, calling out as he went that he’d just be five minutes. Now it’d been twenty and my makeup was done, my hair curled as pretty as it could be. I fluffed it up one more time and frowned at my reflection. Where had Brad got to? Had he panicked and run? I hadn’t heard his truck start up, but I hadn’t been listening.

I went to the window, but the street was deserted, blue twilight shadows stretching out long. His truck was still there, but no sign of Brad. Had something come up? Some emergency? But, no, he’d have texted. He?—

A knock at the door sent me spinning, half-shrieking. I’d been spiraling so hard, I hadn’t heard the stairs creak.

“Coming,” I called, and stepped into my shoes, and skittered off-balance to answer the door. When I did, it was Brad, and he had roses, nine red, three white. A mismatched bouquet.

“I asked for twelve red ones, but the florist was out.”

“They’re gorgeous,” I said. “You got these for me?”

“It’s our first date. You deserve all the trimmings.”

My heart skipped a beat as I took the roses. They smelled fresh and lovely, and I breathed them in deep. Brad found a vase and we got them in water, and I set them out near the kitchen window. The sun would catch them there and bring out their scent.

We walked hand in hand through the woods to the beach, and I gasped at the sight of a lone lightning bug.

“Fireflies.” Brad grinned, wide and delighted. “I haven’t seen these since I was a kid.”

“It’s been a while for me, too.” I watched the pale light blink out, then it appeared again high in the trees. More of them sparked up, a glimmering swarm. Brad held his hand out, and one lit on his knuckle.

“That’s lucky,” I said. “You get a wish.”

“What is this, three now?” He closed his eyes. I watched him and wondered what he had wished for, and if it had to do with our date. Then the lightning bug took off and joined with its friends. My hand found Brad’s, and we twined our fingers together.

“It’s peaceful out here,” he said, but the fair made a lie of that, carnival music striking up from the beach. We both laughed at that, and Brad squeezed my hand. “Shall we?”

We left the fireflies behind and headed into a brighter blaze, lights circling the Ferris wheel, the chairoplanes, the teacups. Games had been set up all down the beach, huge stuffed-toy prizes hanging like grapes. Kids ran around, some waving sparklers, some with their faces daubed in sparkly paint. One kid had bought or won a whole pack of glow sticks, and looped them like bracelets all up his arms. He ran by in a whirl of windmilling neon, and Brad turned to watch him.

“That would’ve been me.”

I smiled, intrigued. “What, as a kid?”

“Yeah, I’d get going and I just wouldn’t stop. Dad used to say, ‘who put a quarter in him?’”

“That’s a sign of a smart kid, one who can’t sit still.”

The kid’s friends caught up to him, and he pulled off his glow sticks. He tossed them like Frisbees, and his friends ran to grab them. They ran down to the ocean where the lights didn’t reach, and all we could see of them were their whirling glow sticks. Brad scanned the beach.

“Their parents around?”

“Right there,” I said, and pointed to a group of adults, watching the kids as they raced through the shallows.

Brad smiled as the glow stick kid started a water fight, splashing his friends so they’d splash him back. “Do you want a big family?”

A strange feeling coursed through me, half excitement, half nerves. Brad wanted to know how I saw my future, my dreams, what I wanted. If they lined up with his. But what if they didn’t? If he didn’t want kids? Or if he did, but he wanted like… ten of them? Or he’d send them to boarding school, like his folks did with him?

I swallowed my nerves. “Sort of. Big-ish? I always wished I had brothers or sisters, so I’d want two or three kids. But not nine or ten.”

Brad burst out laughing. “Nine or ten? That’d be almost a hockey team. But, yeah, two or three.” His knuckles brushed mine. “I’m an only child, too. Always thought it’d be cool to have, y’know, allies. To balance it out when Mom and Dad teamed against me.”

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