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Her stomach curled into all sorts of ties and knots, and she wondered whether he knew he still had a smile on his face.
“So…cuddling?” she asked.
“As long as you don’t alert the Manly Men Association of The Globe,” he made a fist, pumped it once, “then I’m completely fine with holding you all night.”
“What’s that, the M-M-A-T-G?”
“You’ve never heard of the Em-ma-te-guh?”
A laugh tore from her chest.
One of her favorite things about Joel was his sense of humor, as weird as it could be from time to time. She imagined he’d been that way his entire life, and that it had made more sense when he was lanky and a far cry from popular among his high school class. Now that he’d grown into the embodiment of raw sexiness, she found his sense of humor to be one of his most beautiful traits.
“What did you want to talk about?” she asked.
He tucked a hand against her lower back. “Right. So, with all this mess going on, the guys and I are making sure we have all our ducks in a row. Our death benefits are privatized, so Central can’t touch them, but when I removed Sydney as my beneficiary, I realized I didn’t have anyone to replace her with. I was thinking about adding the boys.”
She leaned back. “Seriously?”
“Yeah. If anything happens to me, combined with what you got from Curtis, I want the boys to be set for life.”
“What if you get married and start a family?” Which she would gladly let happen if she was dead. “What then?”
He didn’t comment.
“Joel, it can still happen.”
He remained silent.
She scratched her eyebrow. “So, uh, are you asking if I’m okay with you adding the boys as beneficiaries? Because I am.”
“Well, there’s a caveat. Because of the nature of what we do and the amount we’re talking about, they won’t let me set up a family trust for the boys unless they’re my stepsons or I’ve legally adopted them.” He stroked her back with his thumb. “I didn’t know how you’d feel about that part.”
She’d expected a modicum of discomfort. Something as small as a grain of salt in the sea. Yet, there was nothing.
“We could talk to them about it,” she said. “Honestly, I don’t think the boys would object, especially if we explain why.”
“And you’d be fine with that?”
“Yes, and no. So, adoption. That process can take a while, can’t it? Plus, whose laws would we be relying on? Maui? D.C.? Sweden?”
“To be honest, it’s a shit ton of paperwork,” he said. “I asked Larke to look everything over, and even she sighed. We could be looking at a year or two.”
A possible solution took hold of her and didn’t let go, and the mereideabrought her an unnatural amount of joy. She truly did want him to have a wife one day. However, she didn’t want that wife to be anyone but her.
“What if we got married?” she suggested. “I mean, we joke about it all the time, but what if that’s the solution?”
He went still.
She momentarily stopped breathing.
“You’re technically still a D.C. resident,” she continued, less confident than she was seconds ago. “Don’t ask me how I know, but in D.C., you can get a license and get married on the same day. Then I get some mail at your place, which we could use if we need to establish my residency, and bada-boom, bada-bing, Josiah and Theo are legally your stepsons. Plus, if there’s an interviewing process for your dossier, we’ll nail that. Joel’s favorite color? Quantico blue—whatever that is. Favorite movie? One from the nineties calledChain Reactionthat no one’s ever heard of. Joel’s favorite food? His Nonna’s ribollita. How’d we meet? We were at Julien’s house when he walked in wearing jeans, a gray sweater, and low-top leather sneakers.”
He remained silent for so long, she started to mentally back out of the idea.
“You remember what I had on?”
“That was a guess.”
