Page 22 of Not Quite Perfect

The sleeves of the white button down I’d had on last night were rolled up to her elbows and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. Naked, she was a sight to behold, but dressed in my clothes, sitting at my table after a night of fantastic sex? Well, that was something else entirely. If I had things my way, this was how we’d wake up everyday.

Alas, I was forced to begrudgingly admit that she had a point. She couldn’t show up to dinner up dressed for a date, nor could she arrive in nothing but her panties and my shirt. As much as I wanted the world to know she was mine, that was stretching things.

“Fine,” I conceded. “I suppose it makes sense for you to go home to change before heading over.”

“Do you mind if I shower first? After I finish breakfast, of course.” She held up her glass of orange juice.

“I have a better idea. Since I’ve waited a month to see you and haven’t gotten anywhere my fill yet, you should stay a few more hours. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to let you out of my sight a moment sooner than I have to.”

She slid out of her seat and came to stand between my legs. Wrapping her arms around my neck, she said, “While I appreciate the sentiment, I really don’t want to overstay my welcome. I wouldn’t want you to get tired of me.”

“Not going to happen.” I dropped a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. “I could spend the next hundred years with you and never get tired of seeing your beautiful face.”

I was coming dangerously close to making a declaration I couldn’t take back, but suddenly I didn’t care. I wanted Victoria to know how I felt. This wasn’t some dalliance. Despite the difficulties we may face, I wanted a relationship with this woman. I just hoped she wanted one with me too.

Unfortunately, the sparkle in Victoria’s eyes dimmed and her smile fell. “That’s a lovely thought, David, but we both know why that can’t happen.”

“Is it really so bad, you and me being together?”

She shook her head. “No, but we aren’t the only people whose feelings we have to take into consideration.”

I snorted. “Right, because my dad has done such a terrific job on that front.”

I’d forgiven him for running off with Jenny, but I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forget that he’d prioritized his selfish wants over that of his only child. He’d known how I’d felt about her, and yet he’d married her anyway. It had never even occurred to him not to.

Victoria’s fingers skated over the back of my neck soothingly. “If it were just your dad, I’d say to hell with it and hire a skywriter to tell the world how I feel about you. But it’s not just him. It’s my mom too, and she made her thoughts on the subject abundantly clear.” Her brows furrowed into a frown. “For some reason, she’s all in with this whole ‘one big happy family’ thing. While I don’t get it, she honestly believes it’s wrong for me to have a crush on you.”

“Is that what this is? A crush?”

She chewed her lip for a few long seconds. “No. You know it’s not. But we can’t be together. Not the way we want to, at least.”

Given enough time, I thought I could persuade her to reconsider, but if I pushed her now, we’d only end up arguing. Seeing as we only had a few more hours together, I chose the path of least resistance and changed the subject.

“What you tell the skywriter to say?” I locked my ankles at the back of her thighs to hold her in place.

Victoria’s lips formed a pretty little pout, and she tapped the pad of her index finger against them a few times. “First,” she mused, as if deep in thought, “it would say that you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever met.”

“I am, huh?”

While I worked hard to keep my body in peak physical condition, my face was a result of my genetics. Barring plastic surgery, I really had no control over what I looked like. And while I knew Victoria found me attractive, her saying that I was the most handsome man she’d ever met fed my fragile ego. I didn’t like to examine it too closely, but after Stacia had left me for a guy who could have graced the cover of magazines, I’d gone through a dark period wondering if things would have been different if only I’d been taller, tanner, and blonder. The guy had been built like Thor, whereas I was more of a Loki.

She nodded. “And one of the smartest.”

“Onlyoneof the smartest? You wound me.” I pressed my hand to my chest in mock distress.

She smiled then, and it lit up her whole face. “You never met my father. He lays claim to the top spot. You can be the second smartest man I’ve ever met.”

“I can live with that.” I pulled her in against me and wrapped her up in my arms … right where she belonged. “Do you want to know whatmymessage in the sky would say about you?”

As the words tumbled from my lips, my heart thumped frantically in my chest. I knew it was too soon to put it out there like this, but I wanted Victoria to know that when things got tough and our situation seemed untenable, that I was all in.

When I’d gotten divorced, I never thought I’d feel this way again, but she’d somehow managed to thaw the block of ice that had protected my heart from further damage.

“What would it say?”

“It would say that I met the most amazing woman in the most unlikely of places, and from the moment I heard her cursing Faulkner, I was a changed man.”

She leaned away and captured my gaze. “That’s a really long message.”

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