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Breakfast + Sex + Shower. In that order.
- Row
I grin at this sillier side of him.
Dad’s been stubbornly insistent that I take the next few weeks off, as well as pause what’s left of the renovations until after we’re married, leaving Rowan and me with nothing more to do than enjoy each other’s company.
Between splitting our time at the manor and journeying into town, it’s been one of the most amazing weeks of my life.
We spent the day in town on Monday, helping Eleanor with a bake sale, where the sugar cookies Danika helped me make the night before disappeared within the hour. Rowan feigned innocence when we caught him sending people over to the booth with obscene amounts of cash, selling Eleanor and her friends out of two tables full of sweets before noon.
I’d pinched his side for meddling, then kissed him senseless because how could I not? I’m grateful for Rowan’s heart and his desire to give back to our community, especially when he could just as easily hoard his wealth like so many others.
“You look happy, Molly,” Eleanor mused, and she’s right.
I am happy.
Afterward, we stopped by Record Revival and ended up playing board games in the back with a couple of teenagers. They asked me a million innocent questions about my birthmark, and amused by their curiosity, I offered what knowledge I could before introducing them to the perfection that is Millennial music—in the form of Usher’s greatest hits, of course.
In turn, they taught us what aesthetics are and downloaded apps I’ve never heard of on our phones that later had Rowan asking, “Does this mean we’re one of them?”
Tuesday, we walked through the gardens between the manor and the pool house, talking about all kinds of things. Not the big stuff, like what our futures hold or where we’ll go from here, but the small things that truly help you understand a person.
Unsurprisingly, his favorite color is black, he’s a morning person, and while he once enjoyed a good cup of Joe with breakfast, Reginald has successfully switched him to tea—and he claims he’s never going back. He can’t stand when people chew ice, doesn’t tolerate those who belittle others, and was once the only person who could keep his youngest brother from having panic attacks.
“I’d wrap my arms around him like this,” Rowan said, gently hugging me from behind amongst a sea of blooming flowers in the garden. “Then I’d hold him there for however long it took to pass.” He released me to pluck a fresh pink rose and picked off every thorn before handing it to me. “The docs said the body responds to just the right amount of pressure. Does something to help it regulate, I suppose, but I would’ve done whatever it took to help him.”
It dawned on me then how accurate my first impression was of Rowan being a protector by nature, and gradually, day by day, I watched him open up to me, the manor, and Magnolia Creek.
Wednesday, Rowan and Reginald were acting particularly strange, casting each other suspicious glances across the table at breakfast, and when I finally asked what the hell was going on, they jumped up from the table in a quick burst.
The butler scurried to the foyer while Rowan spun me around and blindfolded me.
“What are you doing?” I gasped, but he hoisted me into his arms before walking me outside, where I was secured in the passenger seat of what I would later find out was a Jeep.
“You’ll see.”
He ignored my frenzied questions for thirty minutes straight until we arrived at the base of the mountains where my parents and I used to camp—the ones I had told him about on our first date.
“Reginald packed us lunch, and I brought your hiking boots,” he said after removing the blindfold, then lifted a backpack in one hand and my boots in the other, expectantly.
“You kidnapped me to bring me on a hike?”
His confidence wavered a touch, the start of a frown forming. “Lucas said women like surprises…”
I full-belly laughed at his explanation, but regardless of his unorthodox methods, I was moved that he went through all the trouble of planning a nice outing for us.
Taking his cheeks in my hands, I kissed his lips, then seductively whispered, “Try using rope next time.”
His brows hit his hairline before he dropped everything and shoved me back inside the Jeep for a delicious, window-fogging quickie.
Thursday afternoon, we drove to Nashville for a concert at the Grand Ole Opry, then made out like teenagers in the buzzing swarm of bodies that surrounded us.
We laughed, drank, and danced for hours before falling into bed at a hotel only a man like Rowan could afford, and honest to god, I’d never felt more alive than when he was worshiping my body, twenty-two stories above one of the most stunning cities I’ve ever seen.
No matter where I go, there’s bound to be stares and comments about my appearance, and all week I’ve encountered both. But gradually, Rowan’s helped me understand that I’m no less of a person than anyone else, and I’ll forever be thankful for that.
Yesterday, after having breakfast with Dad on the veranda, we binged rom-coms and dramas in the theater room, where, much to Rowan’s dismay, I taught him a thing or two about the classics, like Dirty Dancing, The Notebook, and Casablanca.
