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She tilted her head. “Don’t tell me. All your other…um…female persons….love being in the kitchen.”
“That, or they pretend to.”
“I could pretend,” she said doubtfully.
“How about you just sit there, look gorgeous, and be served?”
She flashed him a laughing look. Right then it took all of his mental strength to stop himself from kissing that smart-alecky mouth.
Keeping his distance right now…the wise choice. He knew if he let himself kiss Paula here, right now, in his home, where he had never brought a woman before…kiss her with all her joy lighting up everything around them…kiss her with everything he was feeling…he wouldn't know how to stop.
Paula
“EVERYTHING OKAY?”
Paula sighed, not sure how to feel right now. She and Bastian were lazing around on his plush leather couch. They had dined, they had watchedAn American Christmas Carol, and Paula had called her family. She’d just put down her phone when Bastian had reached for her hand.
She stared down at his fingers, entwined with hers. “Yeah, everything's fine. The festivities are dying down. Everyone’s gone to bed or gone home. Cassie and the kids left, Owen and his girlfriend are back at the hotel.” She looked up. “It’s late. I should leave too. Go home.”
“Don’t.” His hand tightened. “Don’t ever leave.”
She started to reply, but that went nowhere.
Don’t leave? You mean, this house?
Because he didn’t look like he was talking about his house.
He leaned forward. “I mean it. Don’t leave. Make it true, what I told my mother. “
“Bastian….”
“Make it true, Paula.”
She drew in a shuddering breath. “It was just a fake date.”
“It was a real date.”
“Real,” she said, closing her eyes, feeling his hand draw her against him, and letting the truth of his words, so soft, so heartfelt, absorb into her. “It was all real.”
HOURS LATER, THEY LAY CURLED UPtogether, Paula's head resting sideways in the crook of his shoulder. “I told them not to expect anything,” she murmured.
“Why not?” he murmured, his arm tightening around her. “I’m willing to fly you.”
“I’m just not sure I want to take you up on it. The more I think about being in a small aircraft with all those swerves and dips, the more I think it’s the worst idea ever.”
“We’ll give it a try.”
“How long is the flight?” she asked with dread.
“To Boeing Field? Maybe three, four hours.”
“Eep. Ah, okay, no.”
“I won’t let anything happen to us.”
She pulled back to look at him. “Us? Where would you be?”
“On the plane with you,” he said. “Didn’t you hear me before?”
