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“To keep each other’s secrets. Well, I asked her to keep my secret and promised that any secret she had it’d be safe with me.”
And I kept her secret, many years later. How she’d been hurt by some guys and was afraid of men ever since. Well, until Jarett. He cured her of that fear, and for that I owe him.
She turns in my hold to loop her arms around my neck. She smiles. “Ooh mysterious! What was your secret?”
“That’s the kicker. I can’t remember.”
And I’m not sure I ever want to, either.
I stroke her face. “Come meet my family tomorrow? I promise they’ll play nice. They want to meet you.”
“Are you sure? What if they don’t like me?”
“They’ll like you. They’ll love you.”
“I don’t have experience with family get-togethers. What if I screw up? And isn’t it too soon?”
“You’re the only girl I’ve ever asked to meet
my family,” I tell her. “Is it too soon for you?”
She shakes her head, eyes wide, and then she smiles.
Chapter Twenty
Cosima
“Ready?” Merc asks, opening the car door and giving me his hand, helping me out, like an old-time aristocrat.
Or maybe that’s what polite, well-raised guys do. I wouldn’t know. I only dated assholes, after all—until now.
Are we dating?
Why did I agree to this? To meeting his family?
Isn’t this something you do when things get serious? Meeting the folks. It’s too soon—to meet them, to tell if this thing between Merc and me will last the week, let alone the month.
Though it’s been a couple of weeks already, hasn’t it? Am I overthinking this? I didn’t use to be a negative Nancy, but after all the break-ups, I’ve lost some faith. You can’t blame a girl for being a little nervous.
Especially since said girl has no real experience with family Sunday lunches—or with families, period.
He takes my hand in his and tugs me against him. His eyes are smiling. “All right?”
“I don’t know what to say to them,” I confess. “What to do.”
“Do nothing,” he says. “Except sit with me. Be with me.”
I take a deep breath. I can do that… right? Go inside with him. Be with him. Meet his family. He makes it sound so easy, so nice and simple.
His mom lives with her boyfriend in a quaint little house in a quiet street lined with trees. Several cars are parked outside, and from inside I can hear laughter.
Okay, then. That’s… welcoming.
Though the biggest incentive is the man by my side, so frigging handsome in worn jeans and sneakers, and a light blue shirt that matches his eyes under his black jacket.
“Let’s go,” he says in that low, deep voice of his, and my body responds with a shiver and a bolt of lust that has me clenching my thighs.
Great. Ready to meet his mom with my panties getting soaked and my nipples standing to attention. I glance at him as we walk up the path to the porch, at the golden stubble on his firm jaw, the way his pale hair curls a little behind his ears. That wide mouth, those long pale lashes, that heavy set of his shoulders…
