Page 94 of Until I Find You

She pauses, the silver spoon perched between her lips. A smile curls across her face. “Ice cream?”

“Ice cream when it’s thirty degrees out?”

“It’s always a good time for ice cream.”

Whatever my baby girl wants…

So, in our Michelin-starred best, we leave the restaurant and walk down the streets of New York City arm in arm to get ice cream.

We could take my car, but there’s something far more romantic about the walk.

It’s cold, so Camilla has to nuzzle herself against my side, wrapping herself in the furry stole I purchased for her along with her evening gown.

“It’s snowing,” she whispers.

First snow of the season. Flakes whip through the air on the wind. Probably won’t stick. But still, romantic as hell.

“Yeah, I paid off the weather guy to get it to snow.”

Camilla laughs, nudging me in my side. “If you could, you would.”

“You’re right about that.”

I keep stealing glances in her direction. She gets more beautiful by the day. That sparkling smile, long dark lashes, button nose.None of that compares to her heart. The way she speaks to me. Her patience and her simultaneous ruthlessness toward fools.

I picture myself with her for a long time. If not forever. Forever feels like I might be setting myself up for an inevitable heartbreak.

But forever is hard not to imagine.

Especially when we’re in line at the ice cream shop and she smiles down at a little girl not even tall enough to see into the glass who is attempting to order a cone for herself.

Camilla looks at the girl’s mother and mutters, “So cute.”

That could be her and a child one day. Mine.

“What are you getting?”

I have to clear my throat to shake away the thoughts of Camilla having my children because we’re on our literal first date in public. “Not sure yet, have to decide.”

I settle on cookie dough, Camilla on mint chocolate chip, and we sit together, licking at our ice cream cones. “You’re going to get me fat if you let me have two desserts every night?”

“The one we had doesn’t even count. It was a warmup.”

Camilla smiles and grabs my knee under the table. “Have I said ‘I love you’ yet?”

Plenty of times. We say it as often as we breathe almost. “Not that I recall.”

Camilla grins. “Well, I love you, Jack Lyons. Not just for the flowers or the dresses or for the ice cream.”

I’m compelled to ask what reasons she keeps for loving me. I’d love to know them.

But we’re interrupted by the little girl who sidles up to our table with chocolate on her mouth.

She looks back at her mother who gives an encouraging nod. Then, the little girl licks her lips and says to Camilla, “I think you look like a princess.”

Camilla beams, and so do I. She leans closer to the little girl. “You look like a princess too.”

The little girl smiles and skips back to her mother.

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