Now, though, things were different. In such a short time, Daniel had upended my worldview. Made me realize that maybe I could find that man who was the perfect match for me. The man who would be there by my side forever if I would let him. The man who would be worth any drama or heartache or anything else.
There was no one else I would rather spend the rest of my life with.
I thought back to the rest of the conversation I had had with Leanne. About how I was afraid to even think about the future, afraid to think of what I wanted in my life. That was all because of Daniel, because everything that I wanted came back to him eventually.
But suddenly, I realized I wasn’t as afraid of it all as I had been before. Maybe it had something to do with this trip that Daniel was planning for us. Or maybe it just had something to do with how much time Daniel and I had been spending together lately. We had been practically inseparable ever since we had made up after our fight. Not codependent or anything, never that. We both had our lives. I had gone out to see Leanne for drinks on Tuesday, and we had gone out with Austin on Thursday night for drinks and a few rounds of darts.
Things had been great between us, though, and I could only see them getting better in the future. A future that maybe I was ready to start planning now.
I smiled to myself as the boys came into the kitchen.
“What are you thinking about?” Daniel asked in an undertone as he sat down beside me.
I grinned over at him. “Just about how lucky I am to have all of this,” I said, squeezing his thigh meaningfully so he would know that I wasn’t just talking about Matt and Leanne and their family. No, he was part of all this, and I was lucky to have him as well. Especially in light of everything that had happened between the two of us.
Daniel smiled back at me, leaning in to quickly brush his lips against mine, as the kids both chorused noisy ewws. He laughed as he pulled away. “Sorry,” he said, looking entirely unrepentant. I couldn’t help but giggle as Leanne rolled her eyes fondly at us.
Chapter 25
Daniel
I WAS STILL SURPRISED by how much at home I felt around Matt and Leanne and their family. Especially since I had never really had much of a family life of my own, and since I had been living on my own since Austin moved out, I just felt like it shouldn’t be this easy to slip into this new role. But they all made it easy for me.
I felt at home here, in a way that still shocked me. But then again, I supposed it was no surprise, really, with the way that Abby could somehow, with just her presence, make my own house feel so much more like a home.
That wasn’t the only thing I liked about Abby, of course, but that was definitely part of it. The fact that we already felt like family, the fact that she and her family had so easily opened up to me and let me become a part of their lives. I felt whole in a way I had never felt before. Like nothing was missing from my life, like I wasn’t yearning for some other deeper purpose or something else in my life.
“Leanne, wonderful dinner as always,” I said when I was a few bites into my food.
Leanne laughed. “You don’t have to say that every time you’re here,” she said to me. “This is just pasta. A pretty simple pasta, at that.”
“Still,” I said, shrugging at her. I glanced over at Abby, grinning sheepishly. “As Abby can tell you, I don’t do a lot of cooking for myself. Breakfasts a lot of days, but by the time I get home from work, I just don’t have the will or the energy to get too fancy with dinner. A good, warm, home-cooked meal is still special for me.”
“You two should come over more for family dinners,” Leanne said, laughing. “And Abby, I think that’s a request from your man for you to do a little more cooking at home.”
Abby laughed, but I shook my head. “That wouldn’t be fair,” I said. “Abby stays at the office as long as I do every day. I keep trying to shoo her out early
, but she won’t go.”
Leanne grinned at Abby, who shrugged. “I’m not going to let him be the last person in the office,” she said. “Especially not every day.”
“Sounds like you’re both too competitive for your own good,” Matt joked. “There’s this thing called relaxation, you know.”
Abby smiled broadly. “We’ll be getting plenty of that soon enough,” she assured her brother. She looked excitedly back and forth between the two of them. “Daniel’s decided to push back our meetings for a little while so that he and I can go traveling. We’re leaving on the twenty-first for Bangkok!”
“That’s amazing!” Leanne said in surprise. “The twenty-first, though? Of this month? That’s so soon! Why didn’t you tell me sooner than that? We’ll have to have a going away party and everything. How long are you going to be gone for?”
Abby laughed at all the questions. “We just planned it,” she said. “It’s kind of a spontaneous trip,” she added.
“I’ll say,” Leanne said. “I mean, I knew that you always wanted to go traveling, but I didn’t realize you were able to take the time off from work right now. Especially not both of you.”
“We’ll probably have to do a little bit of work while we’re on the road,” I explained. “Erin, my assistant, is going to be looking after things around the office, keeping us informed of the most important bits, the stuff that Abby and I can’t delegate. We might even do a few remote video conference calls and that sort of thing while we’re over there.”
Initially when I had talked to Erin about leaving for this trip, I had tried to arrange things so that we wouldn’t need to do any of the work while we were on the road. But modern technology being what it was these days, I was quickly starting to realize that there was no reason why the business had to stagnate while we traveled around the globe. And if we were able to strike some sort of balance between our travel and the business side of things, then it could only prolong our trip.
Besides, I kind of liked the idea of Abby and I curled up in our bungalow in Thailand, working away at our computers, before we tumbled back in bed together, unable to deny the chemistry between us any longer.
“We don’t know how long we’ll be gone for either,” Abby added, looking almost nervous. She glanced toward the kids and then back to her brother and Leanne. I knew she wouldn’t want to be gone for too long. She wouldn’t want to miss anything in their lives. But at the same time, I wanted to show her everything I could during our trip. Maybe a few scheduled breaks, come back home for a bit and get some real work done in the office. We could always leave again.