We were getting there, slowly, and the trek would be more than worth the wait.
I knew that like I knew my face in the mirror.
Chapter 8
Jessica
Three Months Later
I cut a glance at Max who, amusingly enough, was trying to look innocent.
“Who told you?”
He snorted. “I looked at your file. I’m the boss. Human Resources can’t complain if I want to find out when your birthday is.”
I stared down at the tickets in my hand and let out a shuddery breath—I wasn’t sure what astonished me more. That he’d gone to the effort to look up my birthday when he could have just asked me, or the Cirque de Soleil tickets in my hands. How the hell had he known I wanted to go see them?
That it was one of my dreams?
A dream I constantly had to put on the backburner because I could never afford the tickets.
“Will you go?”
“Of course I will,” I said on a huff, peering up at him. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
He shrugged. “I never know with you.”
My lips curved in a wry smile.
These past three months had been…
Was perfect too stupid a word to use?
He’d courted me. Like a gentleman of old. He’d taken me to places I’d never have imagined going; the best restaurants, the worst dives with the most delicious dishes. We’d flown in his private plane to Toronto to go to a concert of one of his favorite singers. Had ice-skated together where he’d laughed at me for spending more time on my ass than on my skates—he, of course, had whizzed around the ice like a pro. How a Florida native could do that and I couldn’t? Yeah, it didn’t make sense but I was finding he didn’t make sense.
Not once, in all that time, had he pushed me into anything. No pressure on any score.
And the truth was, while a part of me liked it, another part was so beyond ready to take this to the next level, I was going crazy.
While I wondered if he was being this way because he wanted to be friends, and I was concerned I’d wreck it by coming onto him, deep down, I knew that this was, in his eyes, a courtship. He was gentling me, and it had worked.
I needed, with a desperation that bewildered me, to take this to the next level.
How was that even possible?
How could I have gone from being terrified of anything with a penis to wanting to touch this man’s dick?
It shouldn’t have been possible. It shouldn’t be happening. Yet it was. Because he was just too damn lovable.
Yeah. Lovable.
I loved him.
I wondered if I’d fallen for him that day in his apartment, where his family were trying avidly not to listen in to the conversation we had while I chopped tomatoes and revealed the truth of my past.
Or maybe it was when he’d taken me horse-riding and we’d watched the sunset in the distance together. Or, or, or… There were dozens of occurrences, dozens of moments that he’d given me.
Those moments were a gift I’d cherish forever.