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“Will you walk me home?” Cordelia whispered in his ear.

“Yes,” he whispered back.

Chapter Eighteen

The walk back up to the cottage took much longer than usual, but Cordelia wasn’t complaining.

This whole day had been like a dream, from the moment she woke up to the moment Niall pressed her against that tree. She wanted to pinch herself. It couldn’t be real, couldn’t be physically possible to contain this much happiness. She thought she might burst into a thousand pieces.

They kept stopping to kiss every five steps or so. They could barely keep up a conversation; the only dialogue they needed was touch – Niall’s mouth on hers, her fingers in his hair, his hands on her waist. She felt alive in a way she hadn’t ever before – alive and luminous, like there was a lantern glowing inside her, shining its light through her every pore.

But by the time they reached the cottage, the warm glow had turned to frazzled sparks. She knew herself well enough to know she couldn’t go any further without a sense of where things stood. So as Niall kissed her by the front door, in that way that made her toes curl and her breath go ragged, she called on all her willpower and pushed him away.

“Wait,” she gasped.

“Right, sorry,” he said, breathing heavily. For a second she was tempted to pull him back to her, to lean into the kiss like she wanted to. Her eyes hovered on his mouth.

“Cordelia?” Niall said warily. “Are you all right?”

Be cool, she reminded herself.

“What are we doing?” she blurted out.

Niall raised his eyebrows. “Uh . . .” He looked around. “We’re at the cottage.”

“No I know where we are, but what are we” – she gestured back and forth between herself and him – “doing?”

“Kissing?”

“Niall. Seriously.”

“I’m serious.” He cocked his head. “Are you asking, like, what are my intentions?”

Her palms tingled and she pulled at the hem of her cardigan. “Yeah. I guess. I mean that sounds kind of old-fashioned but . . . I can’t just casually sleep with somebody, okay? That doesn’t work for me.”

“Good,” Niall said, dipping to kiss the base of her throat. “It doesn’t work for me either.”

“Okay.” Cordelia felt a thrill run through her. “This isn’t like anything I’ve ever done before.”

His nose traced the line of her neck to nuzzle against her ear. “How so?”

“I mean . . . you’re my neighbour.” She gasped as his hand slipped beneath her cardigan to stroke the smooth skin of her back. “Your parents are my neighbours. We’re in this tiny little town and everybody knows everything about everyone – ”

“This is true,” Niall said. He frowned and pulled away. “Are you . . . embarrassed? To be spending time with me?”

“What? No!” Cordelia said quickly. “Not at all. I want to spend more time with you.”

The words slipped out before she could stop them. In her experience, blurting out her feelings like that usually sent a guy running for the hills. But Niall only smiled. The moon was bright above his head, the stars twinkling in a canopy of black.

“I want to spend more time with you too,” he said softly.

All the air left her in a giant whoosh. “You do?”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Was I not making myself clear just now?”

“That was kissing,” she said. “That doesn’t mean . . . that could be . . . I don’t know. This is not how dating in New York works.”

His mouth pulled up at one corner. “I hate to break it to you but we’re very much not in New York.”