Page 35 of Not Quite Perfect

“David, that still doesn’t answer my question. We could have fucked—gotten it out of our system—and then gone our separate ways. Why did you tell me you weren’t looking for a one night stand?”

While speaking those words in the moments before our bodies had joined had been terrifying, they were nothing compared to now. Now, I had to give voice to thehowand thewhyof it all.Howhad I fallen in love with her so quickly?Whyhad it happened?

I didn’t know if I had the words to explain how she made me feel, all the ways she’d broken through the barriers I’d lived behind. I didn’t know how to explain that I’d never had a choice except to fall in love with her.

“I couldn’t let you walk away,” I answered, swallowing my fear. “By the time the ferry docked, I knew I was more than a little bit infatuated with you. When you looked at me, your eyes sparkling and your face lit with a happy smile, you took my breath away.”

“You made me believe that good guys still existed,” she said, her voice soft.

Her words caused my heart to melt all over again.

I didn’t know all the details of Victoria’s romantic past, but I got the impression she’d been burned before. Badly. Someday soon, I’d ask her to tell me all about it.

But this moment wasn’t about the men who’d come before me. This was my opportunity to prove that I was worthy of her. “All I could think to myself that entire night was that I wanted to be what you need.”

“You are,” she answered. “You will be.”

Fifteen

Victoria

My doorbell chimedas I tugged a set of yellow rubber gloves from my hands. Tossing them into the empty sink, I tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear as I crossed the living room to open my front door.

“Hey you.” David gripped a bunch of my favorite flowers in one hand and a bottle of expensive wine in the other. “I come bearing gifts.”

“I don’t know that I’ve ever been happier to see you.” I grabbed hold of the wine bottle and cradled it to my chest. “My precious,” I said, using my best Smoegel voice as David laughed and stepped inside, closing the door behind him.

“Rough day?”

I tossed a look over my shoulder and as I made my way to the wine cabinet in the corner of my living room. “A story broke about one of the mayoral candidates, which had me rushing around all morning trying to get someone to speak with me. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I also had breakfast with my mom.”

The cork popped and I poured the wine into two glasses, adding an extra splash to mine. I’d definitely earned it. Grabbing them by the stems, I met David in the kitchen, where he was putting the flowers in a vase.

“That bad?” he asked.

I nodded and took my first sip, sighing with pleasure when the ripe hints of cherry and leather hit my taste buds. “She kept asking about my love life. Apparently, she wants to set me up on a blind date with one of your dad’s friends’ sons.”

“Which one?” he asked, a raised eyebrow visible over the rim of his glass. Those two words held a note of barely restrained frustration.

Not that I could blame him. The only reason my mom was trying to set me up with someone in the first place was because she was operating under the misguided belief that I was single.

And ever since she’d found out that David and I had grown friendly, she’d been worried that my little crush—as she’d called it—would only lead to heartbreak and disappointment. Rather than trying to make her see reason, it had seemed easier to let her assume things were one-sided.

David, suffice it to say, had not been a fan of this approach. The fact that my mom was no longer talking in the abstract about me getting back out there, couldn’t have been easy for him.

“Scott somebody or other. Markowski, I think.”

David groaned and rolled his eyes. “He’s a coke-head and a philanderer. His wife left him when pictures surfaced of him doing lines off a stripper’s ass.”

I nearly spit out my wine. “What?”

“Everybody knows.”

“Everybody except your dad, it seems.”

His eyes turned to frost. “No, he definitely knows. They have the same divorce attorney.”

I stared down into my glass, trying to keep him from seeing my disgust at his father’s matchmaking skills. If Richard knew Scott was a lying, cheating douchebag, why had he recommend my mom set me up with him?

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