Page 67 of You Had Me at Chocolate

Sighing, he tentatively slipped his hand onto her arm. “Clementine. I love you. You love me. I’m an ex-celebrity chef who is opening an inn in Montana and writing a cookbook. You’re a small-town librarian with her eye on the Big Apple and a hankering to travel. Do those things have to be mutually exclusive?”

Even through the layers of her coat and her hoodie and the long-sleeved blouse she wore beneath it all, Clem swore she could feel the imprint of his hand and it made her dizzy. Too dizzy to think straight and she stepped back. “Yes?”

“Why can’t you have both?”

Clem frowned. “What?”

“You want to go to New York and work? Go to New York and work—we’ll commute.”

She gaped at him. “Commute?”

“I’m rich.” He shrugged. “We’ll figure it out. And you know, we could travel together, if you wanted? There’s places in this world I’d really like to show you.”

Travel with Jude? Clem couldn’t think of anything she wanted more. God, the idea was so damn seductive. But she’d been around long enough to know how demanding a business could be especially when it was first being established.

“What about the inn?” she demanded. “You’re not going to be able to drop that and just go galivanting off around the world.”

“Spontaneous travel will be hard, sure, but we can open seasonally which would leave plenty of opportunity to travel. And I’ll make sure to train a good manager from the get-go. Someone who can step in and take over when we’re away. Yes, this is my dream, but I’ve already let one business rule my life, I’m not up for that again.”

Clem thought he had a lot to learn about the employment landscape in rural Montana but his when we’re away was super distracting. She shut her eyes for a second and let herself believe they could have that life. Opening them again, she found him studying her, his gorgeous whiskery face a picture of calm and patience. “I’m not going to marry you.”

He laughed. “I don’t recall asking but, okay.”

She quirked an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, given your track record, I felt it was worth mentioning.”

Pressing his lips together, he nodded. “Fair enough. Just… out of curiosity, why aren’t you marrying me?”

“Babies.”

“Okay…”

“All my friends get married and they say they’re not having babies for five or ten years and guess what? Within a year, it’s all they talk about.” Not to mention how relentless her mom would be. “And within two, pop!”

Trying not to laugh, he pressed his lips together a little harder. “You do know you can get pregnant when you’re not married, right?”

Yes, damn it, she knew that. But she already wanted this inn and that apple and him, so who knew how much ground she might give? “Not me.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “So, just to clarify, you don’t want babies?”

“I…” She faltered. Damn it, she couldn’t say categorically that she didn’t want them ever. Just not now. “Maybe. I don’t know. One day.”

“Yeah…” He smiled gently. “I think that would be okay. One day.”

“But not in the foreseeable future.”

“Agreed.”

“Promise me,” she said, her gaze meeting with his and locking. “Promise me you won’t ask me to marry you.”

She was taking a leap of faith, grabbing hold of both things she wanted—adventure and Jude—and hoping it would be all right. She needed to know he was on the same page.

Reaching out, he took her cold hand with his big warm one and brought it to his chest. “I promise not to marry you, Clementine Jones. I promise not to ask you to marry me. I promise not to even think about asking you to marry me.”

Another stupid lump rose in her throat. In this big empty shell of a building that still somehow hummed with warmth and life and would one day be the inn of Jude’s dreams, she’d never heard anything so damn romantic. “Good.”

“Now—” He grinned. “Can we skip ahead to the bit where we tell each other we love each other and we’ll never let each other go then make out a little?”

Clem’s heart bloomed like freaking spring in her chest as she stepped right into his arms and she was reminded of Tasmin and the way she’d looked at Gary on their wedding day. Like he was the one and nothing else mattered.

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