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“God, I love you.”
They sat in the little strip of grass on one of Gia’s old quilts, with the vineyard to their left, and the whispering meadow to their right. Harry opened the wooden lid of the big woven basket, withdrawing a loaf of crusty French bread and an assortment of cheeses already sliced into bite-sized bits.
“Gia made this for us, didn’t she?” Rowan asked.
“Maren did. It’s a grown-up lunchbox. Where are your shoes?” He gestured to her feet with the neck of a wine bottle, then poured her a glass of red.
“Mmm, over there, near that patch of dandelions. Did you know Duncan hit my favorite boots with the mower?”
“Had you left them in the field again?”
“Well, yes, but—”
“We need to have a conversation about cause and effect.”
Rowan laughed and broke open the bread to pluck out some of the soft, yeasty center. “I’m aware of the concept.” She popped it into her mouth and chewed. “Like, you feed me wine and cheese at a beautiful picnic in the vineyard. Resulting effect: you get laid very soon after.”
Harry leaned across the quilt to drop her a quick, hard kiss. Against her mouth, he said, “If I’d known a little cheese and wine was all it took to catch you, I’ve have tried it the night we met.” He gently pulled her bottom lip between his teeth as he withdrew.
“That’s not romance. That’s bait.”
“Same thing.”
“You consider Team Tag the first time we met?”
“Well, it was,” Harry said.
“Huh,” she said.
“Why ‘huh’?”
“I’m just trying to decide if it can be considered an official meeting, without the exchange of names.”
He grunted. “Not my fault. I tried.”
“Oh, of course. That charming old chestnut, ‘who the hell are you?’” Rowan growled, mimicking his baritone.
“I don’t blame you for trying to knee me in the balls,” he chuckled.
“Tryingto?”
“Your aim is garbage.”
“It still hurt, didn’t it?”
A beat of silence. For a moment, his gaze was intense. “Agony. Formonths.”
The subtext made her heart twinge. She rubbed a hand over his knee, and when the ache in his expression cleared, she popped a piece of creamy gouda into her mouth. “What does it matter, anyway?”
“What does what matter?”
“When we officially met.”
“Don’t you think our kids will want to know how our beginning began?” His expression was all innocence.
Rowan’s bottom lip went slack, dipping into a littleohof surprise. She pressed her lips together, and her chest got hot. The gouda was suddenly difficult to swallow.
“I have a question for you,” he said.
