Nate was looking at me suspiciously. ‘Peplum tops? Pencil skirts?’
‘What? I said I hated shopping. I didn’t say I didn’t know how to dress.’
‘I’m going to kill you,’ he muttered in my ear as we followed the girl. ‘You’ve been dragging your feet for two and a half hours.’
I stopped and grabbed his arm to halt him. ‘Honey, you woke me up at seven thirty. On a Saturday.’
‘Are you saying the past few hours have been payback?’
I shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I didn’t say anything of the sort.’
‘Here we are.’ The girl called to us and I hurried toward her to escape Nate’s frustrated growl. I felt the heat of him at my back as I stopped in front of the clothes rail where she stood. ‘We’ve got three different styles of peplum tops and there are a few pencil skirts here that would work with each.’
‘Perfect.’ Nate slapped my ass heartily – so hard, in fact, that the noise of it ricocheted off the walls of the store. And it stung. Like, really stung. ‘My baby will look gorgeous in these.’
The girl blinked in as much surprise as I did before murmuring her excuses to leave us to it. Once she was out of earshot, I slowly turned my head to look him in the eye. ‘What. The. Hell. Was. That?’
He patted the sore spot soothingly. ‘Payback for the payback,’ he murmured with an unapologetic smile. Without another word he grabbed a few tops in my size along with skirts and shoved them at me. ‘Try them on.’
Snatching the clothes from him with one hand while I rubbed my sore backside with the other, I hissed at him, ‘You’ll pay for that.’
I spent the next twenty minutes stonily trying on outfits for his approval. Finally we decided on a low-cut black peplum top with a sweetheart neckline and a sapphire blue leather belt that looped around the waist, a skintight black pencil skirt that came to just below my knees and had a pretty pleat in the back, and a pair of blue suede stilettos and matching clutch. Nate was very happy with the outfit. I, on the other hand, was too busy planning my revenge for the ass slapping to really pay much attention.
It wasn’t until we were at the counter and the girl gave me the total cost that I turned to Nate and sweetly asked, ‘Honey?’
He raised an eyebrow at me. ‘What?’
‘I forgot my wallet.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘No, you didn’t.’ He gestured to the purse hanging from my shoulder. ‘It’s right there.’
‘That’s my purse. It’s not got my wallet in it,’ I lied.
‘I saw you put your wallet in there this morning, sweetheart,’ he reminded me through clenched teeth.
‘Well, now I don’t have it, sweetheart,’ I replied through my own clenched teeth.
We glared at each other for a while. Until I won.
Glowering at me the entire time, he took out his own wallet and pulled out his credit card. As the girl was putting my items into the shopping bag, I rested a hand against Nate’s chest and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek, then brushed my mouth along his ear. ‘Payback,’ I murmured, leaning away as he turned his head to meet my eyes. His own smoldered hotly, and for a moment I lost my breath. Ignoring the thrill of desire that pooled between my legs at his expression, I whispered, ‘My ass cheek is throbbing.’
A smile cracked his taut demeanor. ‘Fair enough. We’ll just call this an early birthday present.’ He grabbed the bags and wrapped my hand around them.
‘No.’ I shook my head, following him out of the store. ‘It’s payback.’
‘Birthday present,’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Payback,’ I insisted adamantly, almost tripping over my own feet as I hurried to catch up with him out on the street. ‘Dude, that is one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. You are not taking it away with some nonsense about a birthday present. It is payback.’ I lifted the bags to emphasize my point.
Nate shook his head as he grinned. ‘Babe, it was the coolest thing you’d ever done until you admitted it was the coolest thing you’ve ever done.’ He laughed at my mulish expression. ‘Fine,’ he conceded. ‘It was payback.’
As we headed down Princes Street we were quiet in the slowly thickening crowds of pedestrians, until finally my good manners got the better of me and I said softly, ‘Thank you for my early birthday present.’
A lot of women turned their heads to watch Nate Sawyer laugh hard at me before throwing his arm around my shoulders to cuddle me into his side.