Page 172 of Smooth Sailing

“Harlan,” I whispered, overwhelmed. Feeling so much it felt like it was clogging my throat, my pores, the entire room, but even so, it was an excruciatingly beautiful feeling.

“So I know my bathroom at home is shit,” he carried on, “and I brush my teeth in your swank bathroom beside you with your mass of fantastic hair and your sweet round ass tipped as you put on mascara and your outrageous supply of makeup at hand?—”

“My makeup supply isn’t outrageous.”

“Watched you tidy up after yourself two days in a row, babe, and you got three drawers of that shit.”

So…

All right.

My makeup supply was outrageous.

“We come from different worlds,” he continued, “and I want you in my world, but I want more to be a part of yours.”

Oh, he was going to be a part of mine all right.

“So, what you’re saying is, this last week you’ve been coming to terms with the fact that you might finally get what you deserve, and it freaked you,” I summed up.

“Don’t know about deserve, but yeah, it freaked me.”

“Harlan, prepare, my gorgeous man, for me to pull out the big guns when I ask, what would your mother say to you thinking you don’t deserve a good life?”

He winced.

Mm-hmm.

And mm-hmm again.

Because now I had a goddamned mission.

I didn’t know where we would land. I didn’t know what was in store for me on Sunday.

What I knew was, he was going to have a great fucking bathroom, a great fucking bedroom, a great fucking everything. And he was going to be a part of creating that—with me—but he was going to have his say and get what he wanted so he could live in the dream he never allowed himself to have.

That was my mission.

And I was going to best it.

I wrapped my arms around him, lifted my head off the pillow and touched my mouth to his before dropping my head back.

“Sunday, you can lay it on me,” I invited. “But for now, we haven’t had a lot of time together, so I haven’t had the time it might take to make you realize you deserve a swank bathroom and whatever else it is you might someday realize you want. But know, I’ve taken on that job and I’m not gonna stop until you’re where you were always supposed to be.”

He swept his thumb along my cheekbone as he kept his gaze to mine, but he didn’t say anything.

“Did you hear that?” I demanded.

“You’re cute when you’re handing out shit.”

“Harlan!” I snapped, at the same time slapping his lat.

He grinned. “Starting with brunch, you gonna show me the world?”

“Absolutely.”

“Think I wanna start with Japan. I like sushi and their gardens are the bomb.”

Excellent news he liked sushi, because I was an aficionado of that too.

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