Jamie: Truck’s here. Be there in a minute.
Brynn let out an exasperated sigh, wishing she could flip-flop the names that went with the texts. But Jamie didn’t say things like that to her: I was just thinking about you. He was thinking about the truck. And she—she was still thinking about that kiss.
A knock sounded on the door.
She lost her footing and staggered back, catching herself against the floral bedspread of the Garden Cottage bed.
It’s just Jamie out there, she told herself. I can do this—whatever this is.
Her free hand fisted the bed covering while the other threatened to crush her phone.
So she let it drop from her hand as she took a deep breath and moved toward the door. When she opened it, Jamie stood there, his blue eyes a gray storm of emotion, a look she’d never seen on him before.
“I wasn’t pretending, B.” He let out a long breath while Brynn seemed to hold hers. “I don’t know what that means, but if it means anything to you at all, please…tell me.”
She let herself exhale, a trembling release of breath, but she felt light-headed nonetheless.
She hadn’t been pretending. He wasn’t pretending, either.
The boy who called her Sleepy Jean. The man who claimed her with his kiss.
She stared at him, at his questioning eyes, at the bags on the ground beside his feet. Yep. The bags would definitely have to wait.
She touched the tips of her fingers to her own lips and then to his. He kissed them, but that was it. He was waiting for her.
There was something she had to ask him. Something important, but she couldn’t remember now. The only thought in her head after his admission was, God, how long we have waited.
She slid her hand higher, her palm resting on his cheek, yet he remained still. He said the words, and now she had to respond.
And then Brynn Chandler rose on her toes and kissed Jamie Kingston.
No audience, no pretense, and certainly no lucky bouquet.
She hooked her finger in the belt loop of his jeans and pulled him over the threshold, pushing the door shut behind him.
“I wasn’t pretending, either.”
Chapter Eighteen
Brynn’s finger was still attached to his belt loop, and Jamie was feeling dizzier by the second. He looked down at her hand and then into her glassy brown eyes behind her lenses.
“You…you weren’t pretending?”
He felt it in the kiss, enough to give him the balls to say the words. But now he needed to hear her say it again. And maybe one more time after that.
She bit her lip and shook her head as her finger curled tighter on his pants.
“Look,” she said, then nodded toward the ice bucket on the dresser. “Dora grabbed it on the way to the room.”
Champagne. Because they were newlyweds, of course.
“We should toast,” she said. “To…a change of plans!”
She was too adorable when she was excited, and shit…was she really excited about him? About them? What about how she felt a week ago? Jamie didn’t want to go back to that night, to him throwing open his office door and finding Brynn straddling another man in his fucking chair.
Pain ripped through him at remembering the sight, and he tried to shut it out, because he was not going to let one stupid memory ruin what was about to happen.
She handed him the champagne.
“Are you sure?” he asked, and she nodded.
Brynn yelped with laughter as he popped the bottle open, and Jamie thought there was no better sound, especially when that smile was for him. Two plastic flutes sat next to the ice bucket, and he filled them with the sparkling liquid.
“To a change of plans,” he said, handing her one.
“To a change of plans.”
They tapped the glasses together and then sipped. At least Brynn sipped. Jamie drained his, sure that everything happening right now had to be some sort of alcohol-induced hallucination. Too perfect and too right, he didn’t want to take a chance they’d break the spell. As if she read his thoughts, Brynn followed suit, emptying her glass, too, giggling when she pulled it from her lips.
And that was all he could think about after that—her lips and what it would be like to taste them again.
“I really wasn’t alone in that kiss, was I?” she asked. “That was both of us. And I’ve never felt…I never…I mean, what are we even doing?” She threw her hands in the air, her right one clocking Jamie in the chin. “Shit!”
Jamie swiped a finger over the scratch, but he was laughing. He knew if they crossed this line he’d end up getting hurt. He just hadn’t anticipated she’d actually draw blood.
“Oh my God, my ring. Jamie, I’m sorry.” But the champagne still had a hold on her, and she let out another giggle. “I’m, like, dangerous around you.”
He dabbed at the skin with the hem of his T-shirt. The wound was superficial, the location right where she’d gotten him with the letter opener months earlier.
“Can we try to keep the stabbings to only one a year?” he asked, and she groaned.