AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“I’m not mad,” she said.
Blake knew she was, but he didn’t press the issue. She disentangled herself from him, but he wasn’t going to let her go very far. She backed up a step. “Come see what I’ve been doing today.”
“I can’t wait.” He followed her so closely, he nearly hit her when she only went a few paces and then opened the back door of her SUV. He’d been expecting her to go back into the house, and he planted one palm against the back window to keep himself from pitching forward.
She bent inside and then straightened with a huge platter of cookies in her hand. “I’ve been baking.” She looked at him, and he tore his gaze from the delicious-looking and chocolatey scent of the cookies to meet her eye. “For you. These are for you.” She handed the platter to him, and it had to hold at least three dozen cookies.
She dove back into the car and emerged with a cheesecake sprinkled with light brown cookie crumbs. “And this is for you too.” She gave it to him while he tried to figure out what to say.
She pulled out another bin of treats, and said, “Raisin-filled cookies. You’ll die when you have these with coffee. They’resogood.” She put them on the roof of her vehicle. “Lemon bars, because your momma said they’re one of your favorites.” She held those and gestured to the car with her free hand. “There’s more, but…” Tears clung to her eyelashes. “I’m sorry I ran,” she whispered.
“You can’t get far from me,” he whispered.
“I thought maybe if I brought all kinds of sweets, you wouldn’t be too sour with me.” She swiped at her eyes. “And now here you are, not upset at all.” She sniffled and shook her head. “You’re so good, Blake Williams. Too good for me.”
“No.” He put the platter and cheesecake on the top of her car too. “I’m not too good for you.” He took the lemon bars and set them aside too. “Do you remember when I said that about you? That you were out of my league?”
She ducked her head and nodded. “That was before you knew how insane I am.”
“You’re not insane,” he said. “You feel things deeply. You’ve had some past trauma that makes you revert to the little girl who everyone left behind.” He reached out and gently put his fingers under her chin and lifted it so she had to look at him. “I’m not going to do that. I had to pick Tommy for a couple of days, because there was suddenly this huge fire consuming both of us, and I had to put it out.”
“I would’ve helped,” she whispered.
Blake’s whole heart melted, and he gathered her into his arms again. “I know you would’ve, baby.” He would’ve told her what was going on, but he wouldn’t have wanted her mixed up in it, if only to protect her. “Tommy’s going to love you when you show up with all these treats. We ordered pizza, and I got the veggie kind you like. Will you come over to our house and have dinner? Stay a while?”
Lauren was smart, and she pulled away. Her eyes brimmed with tears as she nodded. “Our house?”
“Tommy lives with me now.” He swallowed. “There’s really so much to tell, and I’ll start with—Jacinda’s boyfriend took my phone the moment I arrived in Carter’s Cove to pick up my son, and he smashed it. He’d already crushed Tommy’s. We didn’t have new phones until last night, and I called you lots of times.”
“I got the messages,” she said. “I just needed some time to figure out why I hid, and how I could make it up to you.”
Blake smiled at her. “I know why you hid.”
“Do you? Because I barely do.”
“Yeah.” Blake ran his hands up and down her bare arms, enjoying the way her soft skin felt against his fingers and palms. “You hid, you retreated, because someone important to you disappointed you. I can’t promise I won’t do it again. People are disappointing, you know? But I will try so hard not to, because I love you. And you retreated from me, because you love me too, and you don’t want to admit it in case I’m going to hurt you.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Tell me I’m wrong.”
Lauren’s deep, dark eyes searched his. “Can we back up to the part where you said you loved me?”
Blake grinned wider and wider and wider. “Yeah, we can.” He cradled her face in one palm and brushed away her tears with his other hand. “I love you, Lauren Keller. I love you, and I’m not going to keep it to myself anymore. I love you, and I wantyouto move into my house with me and my son. I want us to be a family.” He leaned closer and closer, touching his forehead to hers. “I love you so much, and I want to be your husband even though we haven’t talked about marriage. We haven’t talked too much about having more kids. I know you want to establish rules for how you can parent Tommy. All of that, but we have time to work through it, and I know we can, becauseI love you.”
Lauren’s eyes had drifted closed at some point, and her mouth curved upward now. “I love you, too, Blake.”
“Mm, I knew it.” He touched his lips to hers, the heat exploding between them. He kept the pace slow and the strokes sure, and he sure enjoyed how completely Lauren kissed him back. After several long seconds, he pulled away and said, “I’m going to take that as a yes, you’ll come for dinner.”
“Yes,” she said. She pulled away slightly and added, “I texted you only a few minutes before you were supposed to arrive on Tuesday night,” she said. “I said I had some serious things I wanted to talk about. One of them was marriage, and the other was having more kids.”
Blake’s eyes widened at the same pace as his smile. “I’d love to talk about all of that with you,” he said. He reached for the lemon bars. “But I think I want one of these first, and then I want to take you back to my place so you can see Tommy, and we want to tell you everything that’s happened in the past couple of days.” He peeled back the plastic wrap and took out an ooey gooey lemon bar. “Deal?”
“Deal,” she said.
He took a bite of the lemon bar, the sourness making him pucker and smile at the same time. “This is fantastic.”
She smiled, her tears gone now. “You’re fantastic.”
“We can go out tomorrow night,” he said. “Celebrate our three-month anniversary just a few days late.” He lifted his eyebrows. “Do you want to?”
