I follow Nate to a small, private corner of the restaurant. It’s a booth tucked into a little alcove, our own exclusive view out our own exclusive window. On the table, there’s an incredible looking chocolate soufflé, strawberries and cream, and a chilled bottle of champagne waiting. Two glasses sparkle in the light. I gape, not making the world’s most articulate noises.
Nate turns to me, and I watch the walls come down. His eyes are alive, questioning, claiming mine. I realize, with kind of a shock, that the poker face lawyer fa?ade isn’t just there when Nate is kicking ass. It might also be there when he’s nervous. When something’s important.
“Julia. I brought you here to ask you a very quick question.” Nate takes my hands into his own. Then, slowly, he gets on one knee.
“Oh my God,” I mutter, because this is way too much like the ending out of one of my books. After a misunderstanding and break up, the hero realizes he can’t live without the heroine, and—
“Will you not marry me right now?”
System malfunction. Loss of data. Cannot speak. All your base are belong to us. What the what?
“You . . . want to . . . ” I can’t quite form the words.
Nate grins; a full, honest smile. “Please don’t marry me right now. And if you choose to not marry me this moment, I can promise you an exciting future filled with very exciting headaches. Like travel. I know we live in different places, but they’re not impossibly distant.”
“You’re in Chicago, I’m in Milwaukee. It’s doable,” I say.
Heh. Doable. Christ, pay attention right now.
“Besides the romantic possibilities of multiple Amtrak rides, I can offer you orgasms before breakfast, arguments over where to go to dinner, and a whole host of potentially erotic problems before lunch.”
I like a man who plans around the day’s meals. But I do have to be a little serious right now. Because when he presses his lips to my hand, gently, romantically, I nearly collapse in what I hope would be an attractive swoon. Every molecule in my body lights up.
“We barely know each other,” I say, though I’m hoping that he’ll say something about—
“I know, and it’s crazy. It absolutely is.” He looks into my eyes, a bemused smile playing on his lips. “If I were hearing about this from a friend, I’d be telling him to go to a shrink. But it didn’t happen to my friend. It happened to me.”
“What did?” I ask. I can barely breathe as he gets up, still holding my hands.
“I could be falling in love with you,” he says, his lips mere inches from mine.
I close the last bit of distance, and I’m wrapped in his arms. The kiss sends the hot wash of feeling over me, the kind that makes me want to start ripping his clothes off. As per usual. But it’s tempered with something else. Gentleness.
We pull apart, and he leans his forehead against mine. “It was something Mike said to me this afternoon. When you know you’ve found something that’s right. This could be right. And I don’t want to make what could be the mistake of my life because I was too goddamn scared.” He touches my cheek. “What do you think?”
He could be falling in love. I close my eyes. “As crazy as it sounds, I could be feeling the exact same things,” I say, kissing him again. We linger there a moment, and I almost hate when we break apart. “Any guy who orders chocolate soufflé gets in my might love book.”
He wraps his arms tight around me and lifts me off the ground, just a little bit. I laugh, not minding when my feet leave the earth. I look up at him, bathed in the soft glow of the Las Vegas lights.
“So. Should we go back to the party?” he asks, beaming. The corners of his mouth lift, his eyes soften. I think he was as nervous and hopeful as I was.
I like that.
“In a couple of minutes. There’s champagne, after all. I’d hate for all of it to go to waste,” I say. Giggling, I slide into the booth, and he does the same.
We walk back down the Strip, my arm through Nate’s. I’m leaning against him, and he kisses the top of my head.
How can you want to kill someone and then never want them to ever leave you again, all within forty-eight hours? The emotional whiplash is killer. But I like it.
If I were writing this in a book, I would’ve had the happy ending nailed down tight on the final page, it’s true. There would’ve been a definite proposal, a serious assurance to the reader that this is forever. No one likes open-ended stories.
But hey, this is actual life. Kidnappers in balaclavas, breaking and entering to steal a parrot, all real. And in real life, you may not know exactly how something is going to go. You may not know in twenty-four hours exactly how the story will end.
But you can have a pretty good idea.
“The Bellagio’s beautiful at night,” I say, as we stop outside the gate and look at the fountain. The colored lights are flashing, turning the water brilliant aquamarines and violets as the spray erupts into the air. Nate stiffens for a second.
“What?” I ask, startled. He smiles.
“I think I remember something,” he says. Then he lifts my chin, and kisses me.
26
Nate
Yesterday, 5:30 am
Julia’s laughing, and I don’t remember why. All I know is it’s the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever heard.