But that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate together tonight, that I can’t take them out to dinner and sit a little too close to Aria while we order. That I can’t put an arm around her and steal a kiss while we’re lingering over coffee and dessert.
Just the thought of it is enough to make me unreasonably happy.
It must be the good night’s sleep. It’s clearly gone to my head.
But I know it isn’t the sleep, it’s the redhead smiling at me over her baby’s head as I back toward the door, needing to put some space between us before I say something I shouldn’t. “I’m going for a run. Be back in a little bit.”
“Are you going to lift after?” Aria asks, having lived here long enough to get a feel for my schedule.
“Yeah, but only for thirty minutes or so.” I glance at the clock above the stove. “I won’t have time for a full circuit today. I’ve got to grab a shower and hit the road by seven forty-five.”
“Then I’ll have an egg and cheese bagel ready for you then,” she says as she crosses to the kitchen table, settling Felicity in her highchair. “You want your eggs scrambled or fried?”
I pause in the archway leading into the living room. “I thought you said you couldn’t cook.”
Aria casts an amused look over her shoulder as she adjusts the baby’s tray. “I can cook a thing or two. Eggs included. So, fried or scrambled?”
“Scrambled,” I say, oddly touched.
It’s just breakfast, I remind myself, not a grand gesture. But when I breeze through the kitchen an hour later on my way out the door and Aria hands me a foil-wrapped sandwich and a to-go mug of coffee, it feels like more.
It feels like affection and caring and…home in a way it never did when Rachael lived here. Or even when I lived here alone.
I’m beginning to suspect I’m in trouble—deep trouble—but I’m too high on that first good night’s sleep in days to care.
“Have a good day,” I say as I start down the front porch steps. “I’ll call as soon as I get a reservation and let you two know what time to be ready.”
Aria stops in the doorway, crossing her arms as she leans against the frame, one bare foot propped on top of the other, looking so comfortable it’s hard to believe we’ve been living together for less than a week.
“Okay, but call my cell not the home phone,” she says. “Mom’s coming to get Felicity in about an hour. I’ve got to help Lark and Melody prep food for the wedding tomorrow and the bridal shower on Sunday, so I won’t be home.”
Home. Her casual use of the word makes me wonder if she feels it too, the unexpected rightness of our crazy arrangement.
Maybe I’ll ask her.
Tonight.
Chapter Fifteen
Aria
It’s the wine. It has to be.
The wine is to blame.
I had a glass of Cabernet before dinner and then another with my signature David’s steak, and I’m a lightweight when it comes to wine.
That has to be it. The wine is the reason I’m warm all over, the reason my heart beats faster every time Nash leans over to whisper in my ear, the reason my stomach flutters when his fingers brush back and forth across my bare shoulders in an idle caress as we study the dessert menu.
Too much wine is why my chest feels so tight I can barely breathe as I watch Nash carry Felicity into the bathroom to change her diaper before we settle on a dessert choice.
It has nothing to do with the fact that Nash is grinning at my daughter like Felicity is a treasure he never expected to find, or that my daughter is laughing at Nash like he’s funnier than peekaboo, Sesame Street, and the deer head jack-in-the-box Grandpa bought her for Christmas all put together.
Seeing my baby in the arms of a man who clearly cares so much for her is enough to break my heart in the best way. Nash has been nothing but kind and patient and just plain wonderful to Felicity since the night we moved in.
And with me…
Well, he’s been wonderful to me, too.
He’s so supportive and grounded and real. And sexy, of course, because Nash has always been sexy, but also because of the way he looks at me. He makes me feel more beautiful than I have in years, and a foolish part of me can’t help wishing this was more than a game of pretend.
“It’s just the wine,” I remind myself as Nash emerges from the bathroom with a freshly changed Felicity in his arms.
I do my best to ignore the electricity that leaps between us as our eyes meet across the crowded restaurant.
In gray dress pants and a black button-down that emphasizes his dark eyelashes, Nash looks even more amazing than usual. The man has lashes like a baby llama, long and sooty and curled the slightest bit at the tips. They’re gorgeous. He’s gorgeous. There isn’t a woman in the restaurant who hasn’t cast an appreciative glance Nash’s way while her date’s attention was elsewhere.