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“There’s an image.”
She cupped the back of Axl’s head. “I will thank you properly very soon.”
“Now, that’s exactly the kind of thanks I was looking for.”
“I just bet.”
Michael leaned in to kiss Axl’s cheek and paused. His eyebrows shot up as he smoothed his thumb over her right ring finger. “Chloe?”
“I’ll be right back.”
He swallowed thickly, but only nodded.
She ducked out of their warm little cocoon and brought Axl down to his room. She took a few minutes to get him out of his clothes and into pajamas. He almost woke up, but only enough to ask her to sit with him.
Within five minutes he was already back in dreamland. She paused at his door, looking over his tousled red curls with the sides shaved up like Michael’s. Her little man was becoming a person, not just her baby.
With a sigh, she turned on his little sea life nightlight, then closed the door.
She expected the skeleton of the fort that Michael had built. Instead, she got a fairyland with soft music. Little electric tealights were lined up along every available shelf. He’d rearranged the sheets to make a drape around the mound of pillows.
All the food had been cleared away and a newer, larger vase of flowers was tucked into a corner. Huge lilies and daisies made a spring bouquet. Not traditional—because of course, why would it be traditional with Michael Shawcross at the helm of this fantasy?
He was setting a champagne bucket down outside the pillows. Neither of them had much more than a social drink since Vegas. She expected to see some bubbly since it was a special occasion, but no—he’d thought of everything. A one liter of her Diet Coke, and one of his Dr. Pepper sat in the crushed ice.
She blinked away tears, and couldn’t stop a laugh from escaping.
He spun around on his heel. “Damn, I wanted it all set up before you came out.”
She shook her head. “You are a wonder, Michael.”
He shrugged. “First V-Day with my girl. I had to show up, right?”
“Most guys would buy a balloon and a pair of earrings.”
He poured a flute of soda for her, then one for him. “We’re not most people.”
“You got that right.”
“To us. The first of many.”
She clinked her glass to his, then took a small sip. “I like the sound of that.”
He took one as well—it was bad luck not to drink after a toast after all—and set them aside on one of their end tables. He drew her into his arm and they slow danced in a semi-circle. She pressed her face into his neck, drinking in his scent and his neverending warmth.
Not just his body heat, but the truest essence of Michael.
How could she have thought he was so simple and selfish? There truly wasn’t a selfish bone in his body. He liked to tell her that he changed for her, but she had a feeling that he’d been just as generous all his life.
“Tell me I’m not imagining it.”
She smiled into his neck. She knew what he was asking about. She wasn’t going to play dumb about it. He deserved so much more than that. “You made tonight magical. Even before I came out to find my Axl fort, or this beautiful set up, you’d already made this the perfect Valentine’s Day.”
He pressed a kiss to her temple, then down her cheek to the corner of her lips. “It was already perfect because I had someone—two someones—to come home to. You have no idea how amazing it is to not be alone for the first time in a damn long time.”
“I have a feeling you didn’t spend many Valentine’s Days alone, buddy.”
“Actually, I spent almost all of them alone.”
