Page 127 of Bitter Rival

“But it’s an extra flight,” he counters.

“Are you asking me to stay because you want to spend more time with me?” I serve him a shrimp sauteed in garlic before I eat them all. “Or are you asking me to stay because it’s one less flight?”

He shrugs and spoons patatas bravas and a meatball onto my plate. “Why can’t it be both?”

I squash a smile. I’m probably reading too much into it. I don’t want to get my hopes up in case he has some ulterior motive for asking me to stay.

It’s sad that I even have to question it, but this came out of left field and I’m not sure what to make of it.

“Where’s this coming from?” I lean back in my seat as the server arrives with our paella and sets it in the middle of the table with a flourish. I smile and thank him before he leaves then return my attention to Beckett. “I mean…what are we doing, Beckett?”

“We’re having dinner together just like we do every night.”

“You know what I mean. What is all this? The dinner reservations. The clothes. The flowers. Asking me to stay an extra week when all you wanted was to get this over with as quickly as possible and move on.” I lower my voice so the older couple at the table next to us doesn’t overhear. “This feels like something more than sex with no strings attached.”

“There have been strings attached from the very start, Daisy. It was foolish to think otherwise.”

“So what exactly is this?” I prod.

He gives me his most charming smile. The boyish, dimpled one that makes my knees weak. “I believe that I am wooing you, Miss Larsson.”

“Wooing me?” I laugh, caught by surprise. “Is this a Jane Austen novel, Mr. Heyward?”

“You have no one to blame but yourself. ‘You have bewitched me, body and soul.’”

He’s joking. But still, I can’t help but swoon.

How many men can quote Pride & Prejudice?

And how can he possibly say that he’s lacking in the romance department and then hit me with this? Only one of the most romantic quotes ever.

“But…‘what are men to rocks and mountains?’”

“I’m built like a mountain, and by the time you’ve finished moaning your way through dinner, I can guarantee I’ll be hard as a rock.”

I throw my head back and laugh.

This is crazy. All of it. But I want nothing more than to stay with Beckett on the vineyard and maybe, just maybe, there’s hope for us yet.

Maybe we really do have a future together.

As a special thank you, I moan my way through the paella, being far more dramatic than usual.

“I can’t believe you did this for me,” I say for at least the tenth time as I push my seat back and burrow my nose in the collar of his Stanford sweatshirt. It smells like him. Leather and spice and sex. “I think this is the most thoughtful thing anyone has ever done for me.”

“You need to set your standards higher.”

I’d say he raised the standards so high that no one will ever meet them.

On the way to the drive-in, Beckett handed me a bag from the back seat. Inside was his sweatshirt and my sweatpants and flip flops. Which means he planned ahead and would have had to sneak into my room to grab the sweats from my drawer.

Maybe it’s not a big deal but to me this is better than a grand gesture. It’s the little things someone does for you that shows how much they care.

I still can’t get over it. “How did you think to do this?”

He pushes his seat back as far as it can go and looks over at me. “You always change into loose clothes after you eat a lot. And whenever you watch a movie, you wear sweats and an old T-shirt.”

I love that he noticed. “If you’re expecting extra favors for this…well, you can just…” I toss a handful of popcorn in my mouth and wash it down with cherry Slurpee. “I mean, this might be worth extra favors.”

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