Page 51 of The Fiance Dilemma

My lips fell open wordlessly, the awareness—the sudden closeness of his body, in that basic white tee that didn’t have any business looking as good as it did on him—robbing me of the capability of speech for an instant. “Like…” I finally managed to say, my voice rocky and bouncy and all wrong. “Like grandma’s yarn?”

Matthew chuckled, a smile splitting that serious face he’d been sporting for most of the night. As if he hadn’t been able to stop it and,ugh.It was such a handsome smile, and it was so devastatingly close, so within my reach that I had to physically stop myself from reaching out and feeling those creases that weren’t quite dimples with the tips of my fingers. I wondered how soft his lips were. How they would feel against mine.

A record scratched in my head.

Against mine.

Against mine?

Nope.No, no, no. Absolutely not, Josie.

“We should go back to… the checklist,” I told him, realizing my hand was still in his grasp. Resting on the colorful chair cushion, right beside my ass.While I’d been thinking of his mouth. On mine.I wrenched my hand from his hold, setting it back on the table. “There’s so much to do.” I fumbled with my phone, opening and closing apps until I found the right one. I made a show out of scrolling down and busying myself with all the work we were neglecting by playinghandsies.

“Here.” I swallowed. “Let’s do something easy. I wrote down some housekeeping stuff I came up with while I listened to that god-awful podcast. Things I don’t know or things that should be done to cover all fronts.” My finger tapped my Notes app open. “All right, what’s your middle name?”

The man whose chair was still solidly planted right by mine didn’t move an inch when he said, “Eugene.”

Something in my chest immediately thawed. Dear God. “Like Flynn Rider? FromTangled?”

Matthew’s chuckle matched the feeling inside me. “Exactly like that.”

“That’s…” Ugh. I couldn’t be going all squishy like this. “Great. Amazing middle name. Please congratulate your parents on my behalf. Oh wait. What are your parents’ names? I think I should know that. Your sisters’, too, besides Tay.”

“Patrick and Pam,” he answered simply. Curtly. Straight to the point. “Dad would have you calling him Paddy, though. And my sisters are Taylor—or Tay, who’s the youngest—and Eve. They’re constantly giving me shit, you’d love them.”

I jotted that down in my notes, just to keep my mind from wandering and picturing stuff like meeting Matthew’s family, or joking with his dad about those obvious Irish roots, or sitting down with them for Thanksgiving, or deciding where to spend Christmas. Boston or Green Oak? Should we have Paddy and Pam come visit during the spring? It’s my favorite time of the year and they’d love it here. I—

I was being so silly.

No wedding, but we stay friends.

“Emergency contact,” I murmured. Then said a little louder. “Mine has always been Grandpa Moe. But do you think we should change them? I think we should change them. Let’s change them.”

“Josie—” Matthew started.

“Okay, done!” I squealed. I wasn’t proud of how my voice sounded. “You’re set to my emergency contact. It makes sense. What if someone sneaks into our phones and checks? They could start asking questions. So better safe than sorry.”

“Sweetheart,” Matthew said, sounding so sweet, so unaware ofmy current state, that I wondered if I wasn’t that bad of a liar after all. “I don’t think anyone’s going to check.”

“So we’re back to the sweetheart stuff,” I murmured. And when he didn’t comment, I reached for his phone, which had been somewhere to the right. I held it out to him. “It’d make me feel better if you set me as your emergency contact too. I promise I’ll be very respectful of the Flanagan SOS Code and memorize all the rules you have for it.”

Matthew breathed out a laugh that hit me right on the cheek. My belly too. “One, zero, two, seven, zero, four.”

“What’s that?”

“My passcode,” he explained nonchalantly. “Change it. If it’s going to make you feel better, I won’t stand in the way.”

“You’re giving me your passcode. Why?”

“You’re my fiancée,” he pointed out. Again. And one more time, my heart skipped a crazy, stupid beat. “And my emergency contact.”

“What if I find something on here?” I said, reluctantly entering the code and tapping on his contacts. “Something like bad mirror selfies, or an embarrassing playlist or worse, nudes from someone who—You have me as Josephine Moore?”

“I don’t keep nudes from women I’m not seeing,” he stated.

And my restraint broke. I looked at him then. “Which means you’ve gotten them.” My cheeks flushed with my words, but I ignored it. I wasn’t shy or prudish, I never was. It just seemed like Matthew managed to alter my brain chemistry in a way I was unprepared for. “Which is totally fine.”

“It also usually means I’ve sent them,” he offered.

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