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“Is Noah Templeton your real name?” I ask, feeling silly but figuring it’s a question that’s a lot easier to answer than the million others I have right now.
Noah looks serious for a moment, creasing his mouth, and then studies me carefully in the rearview.
“Well, you may as well know it isn’t,” he says, sending a shockwave of surprise through me.
I thought a simple question might get me off the hook, not make things worse between us.
“I mean, it is, but it isn’t,” he adds cryptically.
I gulp loudly, wanting all this to be over so we can just go back to what we had at the hotel.
Noah and me, nothing and nobody else’s business.
Not meaning to I groan quietly.
“My middle name is Noah. I made it my first when I was a kid,” he says sheepishly, embarrassed. “Templeton was the name on my birth certificate, so I stuck with that too.”
I feel a sly grin of relief spread across my face.
“What’s your first name then, your real first name?” I ask, feeling better already.
“Not telling,” he says firmly, clamping his lips shut and shaking his head roughly.
I feel my fingers creeping over to him, walking up his side and then tickling under his ribs, amazed again at just how muscular the man is all over.
Every single inch is pure muscle.
He flinches, but only for a second and we both burst out laughing.
Real laughter, the kind I’ve never had with anyone else. I don’t need to know his first name, Noah is who he’ll always be to me anyhow.
“You really wanna know?” he asks, baiting me with his grin now, his eyes wide and wild.
I can’t help but laugh louder.
“No! No don’t tell me,” I squeal. “I don’t want to know, it must be terrible if you’re acting so crazy over it.”
“It’s… It’s…” he teases me, threatening to blurt it out.
“No, don’t!” I shout, gripping his arm. “Save it until we getting married!”
We both go quiet and I stop laughing, feeling my face go redder than a beet as I look quickly out the window.
It’s a long time before I can even move my head again, and Noah being Noah, he doesn’t say a word about it.
He lets it go and we drive on in silence.
I half expect him to tell me after a while, but he only cocks his brow once I finally have the courage to look him in the eye, almost like he’s challenging me with my marriage comment.
We drive in silence for a while longer.
“Cletus?” I offer.
“Nope,” he says, deadpan without even looking at me.
“Baxter!” I yelp, almost wishing he’d just tell me already.
“Uh uh,” he says deliberately, with another firm shake of his head, fishing a toothpick from the console and sucking it between his teeth.
“William? Oxford? Fortescue?” I exclaim, grabbing any name I can from my mind, as long as it sounds ridiculous.
But Noah only shakes his head, grinning.
“Guess you’ll have to wait,” he says, knowing he’s silencing me.
Knowing I can’t wait for him to tell me.
Knowing I have the idea of marriage planted firmly in my brain.
We drive on for a little longer.
“Do you really want to know?” he asks, looking over to me as I hesitate a second before shaking my head again.
“Not until you want to tell me,” I confess, and I grimace at the thought. Wondering just how long he’ll hold this one thing over me.
“When we’re married then,” he says in a soothing tone, patting my leg and winking at me again. Leaving it, it seems all up to me as I groan aloud once more.
Throwing my head back against the cushioned seat, I can only sigh contentedly again. The thought of actually marrying Noah, guaranteeing every day of our lives together, gives me such a quiet thrill I literally do forget about everything else for quite a while.
He hasn’t actually proposed though. He does sound like he’s joking with me about his middle name, so who knows.
But, the very idea of it.
Mrs. Faith Holding-Templeton.
I smile to myself, allowed to have more than the fantasy now. The man himself is right next to me.
And I’m all his.Chapter EighteenNoahIt’s good to see Faith smile, laugh for a change. She’s been so on edge and I know it’s not from worrying if my name’s real or not.
Something’s got her spooked, she damn near faded away when I spoke to her Dad on the phone, and that guy definitely sounded like he had something on his mind other than his daughter taking off for a couple of days.
“We can go straight through to Shreveport,” I suggest, noting her mood lifting since I not so delicately hinted at marriage.
I never thought she’d be interested in that, but I feel a certain thrill in my chest when I notice her looking clucky at the idea.
This is working out better than I’d planned. She’s the perfect girl, mine now and she’s not only up for the idea of a family; she’s smitten at the suggestion of actually tying the knot too.
