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I fold my arms across my chest. "Am not. You are."
Granted, not my most mature moment, but I'm jet-lagged and heartbroken. I don't care how perfect the weather is, or how inviting the ocean looks, or how nice my friends are trying to be, I'm perfectly happy sitting on the sun lounge of my yacht, scotch in hand, steeping my liver in scotch at my pity party for one.
"What? Don't I get to see the world-famous neon pink G-string?"
I close my eyes and sigh. "Stop trying to imitate Marsh's voice, Rove. I know you're a former actor and everything, but that shit isn't funny."
"Wasn't me, mate," Rove says, and my eyes fly open.
"Holy fucking hell."
I push to my feet, which, since I've downed four scotches and it's not even ten, isn't as quick or as easy as I'd like it to be. Not as graceful, either, as I stumble down the deck, holding on to the handrail, toward the man in flannel.
"What are you doing here?"
"Well, that's nice. I got a friendlier greeting at customs. Don't I get a Tal Bellamy hug?"
"O-of course."
I wrap my arms around his strong, warm body.
Marsh.
He's here.
I breathe him in.
He lifts my chin and our eyes meet. "And to answer your question, I'm here because I need to tell you something." He smiles, bigger and brighter than I've ever seen him smile. "I love you, too, Tal."
"Oh, Marsh. That's…that's…"
* * *
"That's the part where we stop watching the recording," I grumble for about the thousandth time.
Marsh, Leo, and Rove have gathered around the opposite side of the table, replaying and laughing at the recording I know full well they will torture me with for the rest of my life.
Okay, so throwing up over the side of the yacht after Marsh told me he loved me will not go down as my finest hour. But, in my defense, I was jet-lagged and slightly drunk, and in that moment, so overjoyed my body didn't know what to do with itself. Apparently you can be so happy you actually vomit.
But today is a new day. I'm well rested, sober, and deliriously happy, but also—and very importantly—in full control of my bodily functions.
"Lunch is getting cold," I say, but that doesn't work, either.
"One more time," Rove says, wiping a tear from his eye. "Play it one more time."
Leo taps on his phone to play the video again as Marsh returns to my side of the table. "I'm sorry, baby. It's like a cute cat meme. You just can't stop watching it."
Any embarrassment I had instantly fades.
Why?
Because I've got the love of my life, a big, burly, flannel-wearing mountain man, perched on my knee. I couldn't give a flying fuck about anything else.
I stroke my hand across his broad back, and he's wet. It's over a hundred degrees today, but he's still wearing—as Rove puts it in Aussie-speak—a flannie. It's unbuttoned, revealing his golden skin, but still, it isnotthe right thing to be wearing in this tropical heat.
"You're sweating," I say. "We're going to have to go shopping and get you something more suited to the climate."
His eyebrows waggle. "Are you trying to get me out of my clothes?"
