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“You’re a genius,” Blake said, sliding his big hand along her waist again. She sure did like that he could touch her now without nerves or apprehension—she didn’t want any of those between them—and she leaned into him.
She looked up at him, his eyes dark under the brim of his cowboy hat. “Are you feeling adventurous?” she asked, and he met her gaze.
“Adventurous? Is this like you leading us down the wrong side of the trail?”
“No,” she said, laughing, though she had done that on their hike a few weeks ago. “This is us eating dessert first.” She picked up the three dessert plates and took them to the table.
Blake joined her there, saying, “I always want dessert first. That’s why I kissed you before we sat down to eat.” His deep voice chuckled, and the warmth inside Gina kicked up another notch.
“Okay,” she said. “In a restaurant, the chef goes over the specials for the night for the front-of-house staff.” She adjusted the plate with the chocolate-dipped caramels. “Will you indulge me?”
“Go for it,” Blake said with a smile.
Gina returned it and looked at her creations again. “Okay, so this is a vanilla sea-salt caramel with a dark chocolate coating. It should be smooth and salty, with that bitter chocolate at the end.” Blake had once adored dark chocolate, and she hoped his taste buds hadn’t changed too much.
“Then we have a cream puff, with a pistachio pastry cream inside, a white chocolate ganache on top, and that whipped cream I just put on. They should be crisp and light on the tongue, which is why I went with the white chocolate over dark.”
“Hm,” he hummed, standing almost directly beside her as he gazed at the desserts too.
“The last item is a molten chocolate brownie, with crispy edges, a liquid middle, and a cone of mint-chocolate frosting.”
“I want that one first,” he said, already reaching for it.
Gina beat him to the plate and served him a brownie, pausing as she turned back to the island. “Do you want whipped cream?”
“Does the sun rise each morning?” He kicked another grin at her and went with her to the island—the two steps it took—and picked up the dessert spoons. When they’d both returned to the table and had their brownies with whipped cream, she lifted her utensil to him in a toast.
He clinked his against it, and they each dove into their desserts. Blake moaned the moment his chocolate concoction touched his tongue, and Gina realized he’d made that same sound a few minutes ago while kissing her. She hadn’t heard it then, but her ears had an excellent memory.
She giggled and put her own bite in her mouth. Her eyes rolled back in her head at the decadence and richness of the chocolate, the smooth frosting, and the crispy edges of the brownie. “I nailed this,” she said around her mouthful of dessert, and Blake nodded emphatically.
As he took another bite, she swallowed her first. “All right, cowboy,” she said. “Tell me something about you that I think I know but that is different now.” They’d started this game on their hike, and she’d liked it enough to continue it every few days.
He finished his second bite and said, “Remember how it was Todd who used to annoy me the most as a kid?”
“Yes,” Gina said.
“It’s not him anymore,” Blake said, already scooping into the middle of his molten brownie. “Guess who it is.”
Gina had sat with his family at the wedding last week, but that didn’t mean she knew them. Holly and Sierra had been extremely nice, and they’d engaged her in conversation the most, besides Blake and Todd. Jesse, Adam, and Nash had bent their heads together to talk about something, but Gina had been clear across the table.
The last Stewart sibling had moved from conversation to conversation, and he’d been friendly enough. She guessed, “Kyle?” anyway, and Blake shook his head.
“It’s Adam,” he said with a smile. “He runs all of our horsey activities, and he treats them like they’re royalty.”
“Horsey activities?” Gina said just before she burst out laughing. “I don’t know why, but that sounded so funny.”
“He’s too serious about non-serious things,” Blake said.
Gina finished laughing and scooped up another bite of brownie, this time with less frosting. She needed to dial down the cone of that next time. “Maybe he has a reason.”
“He does,” Blake said with a sigh. “I just get tired of giving him a pass because he was married for six months and it didn’t work out.”
Gina’s eyebrows went up. “Wow, he was married?”
“Yeah, Jesse too,” Blake said.
“Anyone else?”
