The love of her life. “Yeah,” he said, his voice thick. “Who meets the love of his life the day she gets left at the altar?”
They kissed for a long time. They kissed until he remembered that Gary was hiding on the other side of the house—his yard was such that there was only one way in, and they were blocking it.
He pulled away from her, throwing an arm around her shoulder and pointing them toward the gate. “Gary, it’s safe to come out!” he called over his shoulder.
“Oh! Wait!” she cried as she ran back to where she’d been sitting by the machine. “I brought you something.” And goddamn if she didn’t present him with a huge tub of movie popcorn. “Layered with a revolting amount of real butter,” she said, popping a few kernels in her mouth and scrunching her nose in disgust. “I hope I get to eat lots of it in the future.”
She could have been handing him the most precious jewel. A high-end surfboard. An investor for the new app. None of it would have been better than that bucket of popcorn, because the popcorn was her version of beef stroganoff. Dax couldn’t remember the last time he’d cried, but a sharp pain in his throat suggested that they’d better move things along if he wanted to retain his dignity.
As he grabbed her hand, she said, “What’s next?”
He looked down at her. Red-lipped Amy Morrison. His office frenemy, to use her term. “I don’t know what’s next,” he said, needing to tell her the truth. “But I meant what I said: I love you. Whatever happens, I promise to love you.”
“I promise to love you, too.” Something mischievous flashed in her eyes. “But that wasn’t exactly what I meant. I was talking more about right now. Like, the immediate future. What’s going to happen right this very minute?”
He played dumb. “Well, it is Sunday, and, oh my God, you’re going to make my mother the happiest woman in the world.” He looked at his watch. “But it’s only nine o’clock. We have hours before we have to leave for Harris family dinner.” She swatted his shoulder as he waggled his eyebrows and said, “However will we fill the time? Kayaking, perhaps?”
She turned bright red. Ha! He was never, never going to get tired of this. “No to kayaking? Hmmm…” Bending over to speak low into her ear, he whispered, “Shall I take you home and make love to you?”
She bit her lip and shook her head.
“Still no? Not exactly what you want?”
Another shake of the head, this one accompanied by a grin.
He performed a theatrical shrug. “Oh, well, I aim to please, so you’d better tell me what it is you do want.”
And then she stood on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear and did just that.