Page 63 of Marrying the Gardener
Reaching, I comb my fingers through her hair, love the way the red-tinted light plays with the strands. “I’m afraid anythingI might come up with for a date would pale in comparison to all your elaborate ideas. The chance we die would drop exponentially, because if death is a risk at all, I won’t get to spend another Sunday with you, and the idea of that is almost too much to bear.”
“Drama king,” she murmurs.
“You bring out the best in me.”
“Hangovers make you awfully flirty. I don’t think I’d like you to have one ever again.”
That makes two of us. “My default is flirty. I try to curb it for you.”
She pushes the flowing curtain of her waves back from her face. The red in her cheeks accentuates the dapple of angel kisses all over her skin. I wish, deeply, to trod where they have. If only I weren’t heavily reliant on lying here, helpless, and letting her hands work. She says, “I don’t mind flirty.”
“I wouldn’t mind if you flirted back.”
“I don’t understand flirting.”
I smile. “It’s simple. You just say things, and my heart falls under your spell.”
Her lips purse as her eyes wander, then she says, “Abracadabra.”
My lips quip. “Very good. In our next lesson, we’ll cover pick-up lines.”
Her laughter floats around me, soothing my soul. “So, no requests for date day?”
“Once I no longer feel like death, I’ll plan it. We can take turns, if that’s all right with you.”
She blesses me with a forehead kiss, letting the cascade of her hair fall around my face and cocoon me in insurmountable bliss. “That’s perfect.”
I love yougets stuck in my throat as I let my eyes close. Right now, I don’t know if my body can handle the desperate plea forher to sayI love you, toogoing unanswered. So I stuff everything I’m feeling deep down inside, where the dregs of liquor continue to poison, and my perfect wife continues to cure.
Chapter 20
?
Falling for my husband.
Crimson
I think I like Kaleb. I think Ilike, like Kaleb.
I’m not certain when the sensation of like-liking first hit, only that it hasn’t been leaving me alone since yesterday. So I guess that means it hit me yesterday?
Perhaps it first appeared while I was feverishly searching for information about how to take care of someone with a hangover? Or maybe it was while I was gathering supplies and locating one of the sippy cups I keep on hand for when I’m left entertaining my father’s client’s wives and they bring their young kids along?
I don’t know.
All I know is that once he fell asleep in my arms, I didn’t move for nearly an hour. My legs went numb half-trapped beneath his bulk, and yet I couldn’t drag myself away.
I spent almost an hour stuck under a man, tracing his eyelashes and lips and nose, stopping myself from stealing kisses, wondering what in the world was wrong with my brain if Iwantedto steal kisses.
Right now, the sensation of his body trapping me to a pool table ignites in each of my cells, and I can barely handle the way he’s mindlessly rubbing his hand up and down my back while we begin today’s date activity—which involves listening to a guide’s instructions at Canter Creek Ranch.
Because—against all sense—he has taken me horseback riding.
Horseback riding.
I don’t know how he knows that I love horses and riding. It’s not like I talk about it, and I rarely ever get the time or the excuse these days. Growing up in the lap of luxury like I did, my soul knew I was meant to have a pony. I obsessed over the idea. I read horse encyclopedias cover to cover—but I knew better than to ask my father for anything that might involve putting more than a cursory effort into my existence.
The first time I was allowed around a horse was when my father was striking a deal with a man who loved his daughter enough to get her a full stable. The days of befriending her and every horse in her custody lasted barely a spring…then the deals fell through…and we no longer associated with “idiots who couldn’t see a good thing if it hit them in the face.”
