Page 111 of Bottles & Blades

Because Jean-Michel makes it so.

Thirty-Four

Jean-Michel

Her face—fuck,I know that I will never stop doing everything I can to see her face like this.

“You did this?” she asks, her expression transforming from surprised to warm to soft.

“Our last dinner plans were hijacked by Rory and Chrissy,” I say by way of explanation.

“So,” she whispers. “You didthis?”

I shrug. “All I did was make a couple of calls. The staff did me a favor.”

I guide her to the blanket, sit down beside her.

“This is your clearing,” she whispers.

She remembers. Of course she does.

“Yeah, baby, this is my clearing.” I nuzzle her throat. “And the reason I bought this place.” I nod toward the creek that lazily flows down the hill. “The water. The trees. The view.” Now I nod out at the valley, Oak Ridge’s vines green against the gently sloping hills. “It felt like home.”

“Did you grow up here?”

I shake my head. “No, Canada.” Then I laugh when she turns to me, mouth falling open. “Played hockey growing up. Never even drank a glass of wine till I blew out my knee, couldn’t play anymore, and a cute puck bunny offered to share a bottle with me to drown out my troubles.”

“Well, that explains the hockey connection.” Her voice is light, but there’s a thread of possessiveness in her next words that I can’t deny liking. “What’s the puck bunny’s name?”

I grin, smooth my fingers over her cheek. “You want her address and social security number too?”

“Can you get it?”

My grin widens. “Of course I can.” I brush my lips over hers. “Though, I’d have to remember her name first.”

A lush mouth dropping open. “You don’t remember her name?”

“Nope.”

“Poor thing.” But I don’t miss that she sounds pleased.

“I thought you were jealous,” I tease lightly.

“Jealous?” She shakes her head, affecting innocence. “What’s there to be jealous about?”

I chuckle, tug a strand of her hair. “So says the woman who bit my head off in her parent’s kitchen?—”

“As previously mentioned, you were overstepping by about a mile.”

“And also the woman who is demanding names and identifying information about a woman from my past,” I go on without missing a beat.

She swats me across the chest. “I was teasing.”

I snag her hand, roll over the top of her. “Was not.”

“Was”—she flips me in a move I don’t see coming—“too.”

I blink at her, shock coursing through me. “Where’d you learn those moves, buttercup?”

---