Page 44 of Mom-Com
Her cheeks flushed with color again. “I quite liked being pressed against the wall.” She squeezed my hands and lifted her legs to drape them across my lap. “Thank you for telling me. But I have my own confession and you’re going to freak out when you hear it.”
“You can tell me anything, I promise.” I couldn’t help myself. I flipped her long dress up and tunneled my hand underneath to stroke her bare leg.
“Mmm...” She closed her eyes for a second and then opened them. “Keep that up and I might start bumbling my words too.” We smiled at each other. “I love to go to yard sales. Have I told you that? Well, I was at one right after you moved in and I found an old magazine I ended up buying. Guess the title of the column that caught my eye?”
At my headshake, she kept going. “Fifty Ways to Find a Husband, written by Loni Sanders in 1959.”
My hand froze. “That’s my grandmother. Well, that’s her pen name. You read her article?”
She nodded, a grin creeping onto her face. “Yep. I sure did. And I followed it to a tee. I kept trying her list out on random men and you kept foiling my flirting.”
I was shell-shocked. I literally couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So, the same list, but for women, that I was following too? Only you were attempting to flirt with other men, while I was attempting to flirt with you?”
She nodded, her grin now a giggle. “Can you believe that?”
“Breaking down in front of the firemen?”
“Part of the list.”
“Baking pies? Making your own clothes?”
“The list.” She tilted her head. “Dancing? Flowers?” She gasped. “The button on your shirt?”
“All from the list,” I confirmed with a nod. “What are the odds that we’d move right next to each other and both find an old article of my grandmother’s from 1959 about finding a partner and actually follow through with it?”
“The odds have to be pretty high. Probably more than winning the lottery.”
“It’s like it was...”
“Fate?” she whispered.
“Destiny,” I answered.
19
Lily-Marie
Dinner was a heady rush of intimate conversation, long glances, and a new feeling flooding my body I couldn’t quite put my finger on. His focus was 100 percent on me and me alone. The attention was like rain in the desert, necessary, wanted, treasured. But I almost couldn’t absorb it all. I was in my head, wondering what I’d done to deserve this man. I wanted to stop thinking and just feel, just appreciate this time with him.
He’d rented out an entire restaurant for me, delivered me there in a horse-drawn carriage, and attended to my every need. Well, except for one. I was hoping he’d satisfy that one later tonight too.
When we’d stuffed ourselves on the best ravioli and tiramisu, Jameson pushed back his chair and dropped his napkin on his empty plate. Our server didn’t even come out with a bill, which was weird, but I guess when renting out a whole restaurant, that’s taken care of ahead of time. I wouldn’t know about such things. I only had the disposable income to rent out a Taco Bell in the early morning hours when there wasn’t much demand for a bean burrito anyway.
He came around, his eyes morphing into a darker gray that spoke right to the pulse between my legs. I shoved back my chair before he could get to it, nearly tipping it over in my haste to get to the rest of the evening’s entertainment.
His low chuckle vibrated right through me, shaking me out of my head and finally returning me to my body. Then his hands skated up my arms from behind, causing goose bumps to follow.
“I miss your hair,” he whispered as he kissed along the back of my neck.
“Pretty sure it’s still there...” My voice came out breathy and I was happy our waiter wasn’t there to hear how far gone I already was.
That low chuckle again. “Oh, it’s there, Rapunzel. I just want it down so I can wrap it around my fist and tug on it.”
Holy fucknuts, Jameson was talking dirty to me. My mouth went dry and all the moisture went south. I loved how he could go from a nerdy professor in conversation to a dirty-talking Don Juan mere seconds later.
“Let’s go home.” He pulled away and I shivered again, missing the warmth that radiated from his muscled torso. Holding my hand, he walked us out to the carriage and wrapped a blanket around my shoulders and another across my lap.
As the horse lurched into motion, he palmed my cheek and tilted my head just where he wanted it. His lips touched mine with an urgency that surpassed our previous make-out session, a level I didn’t think was possible.
