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We hurry up the boat ramp.
“Good one.” Paxton helps me climb aboard, and then he leads me across the deck, and we climb down the steps into the cabin.
It’s cool and quiet down there. It feels as if we’re in our own little world.
The boat is rocking gently. He looks at me with concern.
I stand there for a moment, waiting. Then I nod at him. “The medicine worked. I feel completely fine.”
“Well, praise the Lord and pass the pudding, as my mother would say. By the way, did I hear you say this is a real date?”
“If you’ll have me.” I look up at him, suddenly shy.
Paxton shakes his head. “Ruby James, for a genius, sometimes you are a real bonehead. I’ve wanted you since the first moment I laid eyes on you.”
My eyes widen in surprise. “But I was a weeping snotty mess.”
“But I wanted to make you my weeping snotty mess. Why do you think I suggested the fake dating thing from the very beginning?”
“Uh . . . to be nice?”
“I’m not that nice.” He shakes his head. “No, seriously, I’m not,” he says when I try to protest. “I can’t afford to be. Everyone wants a piece of me. If I said yes to everyone, if I offered to help everyone, there would be nothing left of me, and there would still be all kinds of angry, disappointed people who resented that I gave things to other people and not them. For me to offer someone my time, and my presence, they have to be very special to me.”
“Oh.” I breathe the word.
“Yes, I am saying you are special to me.”
He’s moving towards me. He backs me up against the wall.
“Ruby James, will you be my girlfriend, and whenever you’re ready for it, I mean the very second you’re ready for it... more? I just need to warn you that my mother’s going to be all over us like a rash on a baby’s butt.”
I slap his shoulder playfully. “Don’t compare your mother to diaper rash! I love your mother.”
“She loves you too. But will you still love her when she immediately starts talking about baby names and engagement rings and wants to help you plan your wedding, and sets up a prayer circle with all of your friends asking the Lord to bless us with twins?”
The thought makes me unexpectedly emotional, because the thought of planning a wedding without my mother always made me so sad. And it’s still sad, but having his mother there will take some of the sting away.
“I will,” I tell him.
“That sounds a lot like ‘I do.’” He slides his finger under my chin and tips my head up to look at him.
I blink up at him. “Slow your roll there, buddy! I want to graduate before I get married and I want a year of married life—at least—getting to know each other, getting settled, getting my career set up in a way that it will also allow for family, before I want to think about making babies.”
“Making babies.” He leans down to nibble my lower lip. “I like the sound of that. We should start practicing now. I hear it’s hard.”
Arousal pulses through my body. I slide my hand down his hard, flat stomach and dip my fingers into the waistband of his jeans. I caress the thick head of his cock. “So hard,” I murmur.
He sweeps me up in his arms. “Caveman time,” he announces.
Moments later, we’re in a small rear bedroom. He carefully deposits me on the bunk bed.
“Wait!” I protest. “The paparazzi are out there waiting.”
“And that’s why I hired the captain to guard the boat.” He unbuttons the top button of my blouse and moves on down, his hands swift and sure. “I want to rip this off you with my teeth, but then you wouldn’t have anything to wear and you’d have to leave the boat naked.”
“You’d lend me your T-shirt.”
He shrugs, smiling impishly. “Would I, though?” My shirt is unbuttoned, and I sit up and shed it, then unhook my bra.
