Page 95 of Puck You Very Much

“Stop whining, Alvarez,” Jack chimed in, grinning broadly. “You’re way too young for Lucy, anyway.”

“She’s only three years older!” the defender replied angrily.

“Way too old,” Dax confirmed, pulling Lucy closer to him. “So find your own PR consultant.”

“Please don’t,” Lucy said hastily. “Or Leslie will go crazy.”

He chuckled softly. “Well, we don’t want that.”

“No,” she confirmed, sliding a hand behind his neck. “By the way, I’m no longer your image consultant. Conflict of interest.”

“Well, that’s stupid. How am I supposed to live without one?” he murmured, and kissed her again.

He kissed her simply because he could. And because he would never tire of it…

Epilogue

“Your palms are clammy. It’s like I’m holding a fish.”

“What a lovely comparison. C’mon, it’s warm, Dax.”

“It’s not even sixty degrees outside.”

“Standing next to you, it’s rarely under one hundred!” she replied, feigning seriousness.

Dax laughed softly, squeezed her fingers, and pushed her up the stairs. “Not that I don’t appreciate your smarmy compliments… But you’re nervous, Lucy. Again.”

Oh God, yes, she was. Even the old, creaky stairs couldn’t drown out her shallow breathing. “My compliments aren’t smarmy. They’re highly original,” she stated, glancing over her shoulder. “And I’ve never introduced a guy to my sister.”

He raised his eyebrows in disbelief. “Never?”

“No. It was always too…intimate for me. It would have meant it was serious. Which it never was. But now it is. Maddie will pay you far too much attention, ask you about your intentions, how many children you want, whether you prefer a civil ceremony or a church wedding… It could get awkward.”

A leisurely smile spread across Dax’s face, which she felt deep in her stomach. “Well, first: two children. Second: The devil doesn’t marry in church. Third: It would be highly entertaining to explain my uniformly chaste intentions to Maddie in great detail. I can also draw her dirty pictures.”

Lucy’s cheeks heated up…because two children and a civil ceremony sounded good to her. But aside from that… “Yes, dirty pictures would make itlessawkward. You’re absolutely right.”

“Fine, then I’ll just draw pictures with my words,” he promised in a dark voice. “I can explain to her all about what we did yesterday, when I...”

“Guys, you’re not alone,” came a tortured voice from behind Dax, and Lucy flinched. Oops. She had completely forgotten that Matt was here.

“Sorry, Matt,” she said contritely as she stopped on the landing in front of Maddie’s door. “It won’t happen again.”

“You’ve been promising me that for days, yet the nightmares continue. You know, the only context in which I want to hear the wordearlobeis when someone shows me their pretty new earrings or tells me a fun fact about how you can tell the color of a chicken’s egg by looking at its earlobes! Expressions likenibblingorlickinghave no place in the same sentence!”

Dax rolled his eyes. “Don’t be so difficult. We both know you’re no more a virgin than I am… What the hell are you doing here anyway?”

“Lucy invited me?”

“Why?” he asked, staring at her blankly.

She shrugged. “Matt’s a good buffer.”

“He is?”

“I am. You should know that, Dax. I’m good at everything I do,” Matt confirmed.

Lucy sighed and raised her hand, but before she could knock, the door opened.

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