His face fell into a wide smile. “I don’t think that’s how Mount Everest works.”
I shrugged, pulling my hand out from my pocket to scratch my cheek.
“So, you’ve been imagining me with other women, huh?” he said. I could feel him smiling, though I kept my eyes averted.
“No.”
“You said it.”
“Why would your parents be surprised that you brought somebody home?”
He gave me a crooked grin. “Until now, I hadn’t found a woman I wanted to bring home.”
I glared at him, hoping my flushed cheeks could be blamed on the wind. “Miles.”
He shrugged. “I haven’t dated much lately.”
The cold breeze picked up, ruffling my hair. “Why?”
There was a long moment before he responded. And it was then that I realized he seemed to know a lot more about me than I did him.
“I was dating a girl a few years back, but…” He trailed off for a bit, the hitch in his voice causing me to look over at him. “It’s just taken me a while to get back on that horse, I guess.” He gave me a boyish grin, trying to play down the emotions he had obviously felt at the start of the sentence, but he didn’t fool me. Before I could ask further, he changed the subject. He settled back into his teasing self, dropping me off at my cabin and making me laugh even as I closed the door in his face.
SEVENTEEN
“Dear old world,’’ she murmured, “You are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you.”
L.M. Montgomery - Anne of Green Gables
We had crossed plenty of small items off our list yesterday. Miles had a few errands and chores to do for his dad this morning. Suddenly missing Chloe and the girls, I surprised them at their cabin that morning for breakfast. The lodge had complimentary muffins, juice, and fruit every morning, but Chloe had brought her own food for the cabin that she knew her girls would eat. With her morning sickness, she rarely made it out of the cabin before 10 or 11.
The girls were very excited to see me, and I spent the first ten minutes playing with them on the floor, which evolved to me letting them paint my nails a fashionable rainbow of orange, yellow, and brown.
When I got them settled with a few puzzles, I meandered into the kitchen, where Chloe sat at the table, sipping ginger tea. The sink had dishes waiting to go into the dishwasher, and cereal and bowls were scattered around the table as though she had mustered just enough energy to feed her charges with nothing left over for cleanup.
“How are you feeling?”
She smiled wanly. “I’m doing okay. Hopefully, it will just be another week or two of feeling like this.”
“You make pregnancy sound so fun.” I made my way to the sink and began putting the dishes into the dishwasher.
“It can be hard, but it comes with the best payoff. You don’t have to do those. I can get them.”
“So can I,” I said. “Where’s Ben?”
“He went to grab some Almond Joys and frozen burritos from the store.”
My eyebrows raised. “Almond Joys and frozen burritos?”
“The heart wants what it wants.”
I snickered. “Your poor heart must be sick, too.”
“All I want is a burrito I can microwave and then cover in ketchup, and some Almond Joys to polish the whole thing off. It’s literally all I can think about.”
“Yikes.”
“So, how are things going with you and Miles?” Chloe asked, taking a calculated sip while she studied me.
I closed the dishwasher and made my way to the table to pour myself a bowl of Lucky Charms, contemplating my response. She only halfway believed that we were really dating, so it wasn’t a huge stretch to just divulge my whole secret now. But if I told Chloe it was all fake, it would feel fake again, and there was a dangerous warmth growing inside of me when I thought of Miles. It had been kind of nice to think of him as something like a friend. He still drove me crazy and was having way too much fun pushing the lines of our fake relationship, but I wasn’t ready to come clean just yet.
“We had ice cream sundaes with his parents last night, and his mom kissed me.” My family members were not kissers, so to say I had been surprised at his mom planting one on me was an understatement.
“Wow. Is she better or worse than her son?”
I snorted. I should have known Chloe would have no interest in the boring details I was willing to give her. She’d go right for the good stuff.
“Nice pivot,” I said through a mouthful of cereal.
“Thank you. I could be puking at any moment, so I need you to get right to the good stuff . Besides, nobody could really tell from that pathetic kiss you gave him at the lodge earlier.”
“I’m not into PDA. I told you.”
“With the right guy, you will be.”
My skin betrayed me as it blushed hotly under her perceptive gaze. I promptly changed the subject, which only made her laugh.
“So, what are we doing here again?” Miles scratched his head as I led him down the cereal aisle at Shaws, the local grocery store in Montpelier.
“Listen, Taylor, if you want to win this gingerbread competition, I can’t just use whatever sub-par materials come in the kit. We have to get creative.”
“You know we don’t have to win to get it checked off our cards, right? We could just slap some frosting down on the kit and call it a day.”
I finally found a box of Golden Grahams and handed it to Miles, grabbing his arm to herd him into the next aisle. “You made me jump into a frozen pond, so you will be wearing an apron and holding a hot glue gun for me without complaint.”
He looked interested. “Just an apron? I’m suddenly intrigued.”
I pushed him away as I finally found the fresh herbs. “My cousin makes these amazing gingerbread houses every Christmas. They’re next level. We’ll win for sure.”
He bit back a grin and gave me a slight bow as I handed him a plastic container full of fresh rosemary sprigs. “I love it when you’re bossy.”
We checked out a few minutes later and piled into Miles’s white truck with our bags.
“I was planning to pay for all of that,” I insisted, settling into the passenger seat as he started his truck.
“I know. You told me several times.”
“Then why didn’t you let me?”
He looked over at me, his eyes seeming to soak me in from my hair all the way down to the tips of my wet boots. “Because I wanted to,” he said simply.