“Yeah, Lis. Please, tell me what you just meant.”
“I meant…” I carefully studied his face before I found the courage to say, “We aren’t together anymore?” It came out as a question. “I just figured—”
I stopped talking when he moved closer, one hand on the back of the couch, the other on the arm, caging me into the corner.
“Say the words,” he ordered on a pained whisper.
“I think you should leave.”
“Not the words.”
“Back up,” I pleaded, but he got closer. Mere inches separated our bodies—less separated our mouths.
His breath breezed over my skin as he ground out, “Still not the words.”
My pulse spiked at the same time my mouth dried.
He was too close.
Way, way, way too…
I closed my eyes.
He was wearing a different cologne, but the underlying smell of clean soap and shampoo was still my Roman, and the smell assaulted my olfactory senses at full force. But it was the subtle hit of beer on his breath that transported me back in time to a moment that seemed as though it had been nearly a million years ago, and it felt as though it had been even longer than that.
After numerous plates of chicken parmesan—all of which were wrong—Roman and I went out dancing at a hole-in-the-wall salsa bar downtown. Neither of us knew how to salsa, but we both made fools of ourselves trying to learn. I proved myself to be a quick study. Roman not so much, but he never quit. He also never took his eyes—or his hands—off me.
On the way home, we stopped at a food cart to pick up a two a.m. snack. Roman was almost as drunk as I was, and neither of us could stop laughing long enough to order.
“Two gyros. Extra Z. Add feta,” he finally got out, blindly waving a twenty at the cashier. He pulled me into his arms and kissed the top of my hair.
“Oh my God, you ordered for me again.” I feigned horror, playfully pushing him away.
He grinned with pride. “Sure did.”
“And what if I don’t like gyros?”
He swayed toward me, gliding his hand up the back of my neck and into my hair. “Everyone likes gyros.”
“Not everyone,” I laughed only to be silenced when he tilted his head down and brushed his nose with mine.
He hadn’t kissed me yet. I wasn’t sure what the hold-up was, because God knows I’d given every signal I could think of—including a few I’d invented on the fly.
He dropped his forehead to mine and stayed close as I silently willed him closer.
When his mouth never made contact, I licked my lips and whispered, “I don’t eat lamb.”
His other arm hooked around my waist to bring our bodies flush. The intoxicating scent of clean sweat and beer invaded my senses. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, holding it in for as long as my lungs would allow, engraining it into my memory so I could never lose it—lose him.
As I exhaled, I felt his breath at my ear.
“It’s a food cart, Lissy. I assure you these are beef.”
It wasn’t a sexy statement by anyone’s standard, but it still made my knees weak.
Pressing my breasts against his chest, I raked my nails up his back. Then I whispered my own unsexy reply, “Oh. Okay, then. I like beef.”
He stared at me for several beats, his eyes heating despite our ridiculous conversation.
My chest heaved impatiently.
Kiss me.
As though he’d heard my silent plea, his face split into a gorgeous grin.
A nanosecond later, in front of a food cart, while a dozen hungry drunks stumbled around us, Roman Leblanc changed my life.
But it wasn’t with a kiss.
“Marry me,” he breathed.
My eyes popped open.
“Say the words,” he growled into my face.
“Roman, please.” I pressed a hand to his chest and shimmied up the couch so he was no longer looming inches from my face—and my mouth. His eyes were still scary, but the way he watched me held more than just anger.
That might have been the most terrifying part of all.
“Look, I didn’t mean that you couldn’t be involved. I only meant that you didn’t have to be involved. You know…because—”
“The kid wouldn’t be mine,” he finished for me.
Yes. Exactly that. “No. That’s not it.”
“Then. What. Is it?”
Um…the kid’s not yours, and you didn’t exactly stick around after the first one.
“We aren’t together anymore. I didn’t figure you’d want to get—”
“I swear to God, if you say involved, I’m going to lose my mind.”
I’d seen Roman lose his mind, and it was not pretty. I valued my coffee table, so I bit my lip.