Feeling uneasy, I swallow. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
It’s a moment before he answers. Streaming through the windows, the sun worships him, glinting mink and gold in his dark hair, bronzing his skin, sculpting his impressive abdominal muscles in highlights and shadow.
“Juanita sent me a text a few minutes ago.”
I drop the bacon and sit up ramrod straight. “Is she okay?”
I’ve seen her several times since returning to New York. The first was at her house a week after we returned from Alaska. Her mother didn’t want to let me in, but her siblings convinced her to. Juanita was in far better spirits than I would’ve been in her shoes. With her pet rat, Elvis, perched on her head, she told me how she’d been on her way back from my house the night she threw the switch, when she’d been nabbed on the street by a group of men in combat gear. A van had pulled up alongside her, they’d swarmed out, and that was all she remembered until she woke up in the caves. I’d hugged her and told her I loved her. She’d laughed and told me to suck a bag of dicks.
Then she showed me the scar on her back—sixty stiches, raw and red—and I broke down and cried.
She rolled her eyes and told me not to be such a pussy.
“She’s fine,” Connor reassures me in a soothing voice, caressing my cheek. “She’s great, actually. She just wanted to find out what time she should come over for our barbeque tomorrow.”
My body sags in relief. I wonder if this is what it feels like to have kids, this constant, sick feeling of worry.
“Oh. Thank God. So why do you look so weird?”
“Do I?”
“Very.”
He smiles. “So I’m obese, cruel, and weird-looking. You poor thing. How do you put up with me?”
“Bacon,” I say seriously. “You make excellent bacon. It’s your one saving grace.”
“Aside from Zeus,” he answers in the same serious tone.
I nod. “Exactly. Now explain your face, please.”
He tugs on a lock of my hair. “Maybe I was just thinking about how much I like the color red.”
I shake my head. “Nice try.”
He looks at the ceiling, pretending to think. “Maybe I was contemplating what I should make you for dessert.”
“Dessert after breakfast? You know you’re a really bad liar, right?”
His eyes meet mine, and his smile fades. His voice drops an octave when he says, “Maybe I was wondering when you were going to put your townhouse on the market.”
“Oh. That.”
When I look down at my plate of food, Connor puts his knuckle under my chin and forces me to meet his eyes. “Yes. That.”
“Um. I can’t yet.”
His brows shoot up. “Why not? You expecting to move back in?”
“No. I mean, I hope not.”
His eyes get wide. I can’t tell if the look he’s giving me is anger or astonishment.
“You hope not?”
Feeling a little defensive, I say, “Well, we haven’t exactly talked about the future—”
“I’m in love with you,” he says abruptly. “You are my future.”
That takes my breath away. We’ve never said ‘I love you’ to each other. Even after the day in the hospital, it’s always just been ‘I loathe you.’ Our little inside joke.
I whisper, “So…then…you’re just one of those guys who doesn’t need the piece of paper?”
Connor looks at me like I’m speaking a foreign language that he doesn’t understand. “What. The. Hell. Are you talking about?”
All of a sudden, my face is flaming. I’m embarrassed and uncomfortable and wish we weren’t having this conversation. But we are, so I might as well get it over with. I blow out a breath, square my shoulders, and look him in the eye.
“I’m talking about marriage.”
Connor’s face transforms. He straightens, takes my face in his hands, and breathes, “Yes.”
I blink. “That wasn’t a question.”
“Yes it was. You just asked me to marry you.”
Is he fucking with me? “Uh…”
“And I said yes.” He flutters his lashes. “Where’s my ring?”
He is fucking with me! I punch him in the shoulder. “You dick!”
Without missing a beat, he says, “Because I already have yours.”
I freeze. I’m pretty sure my heart stops beating, but I can’t tell because I’ve lost all sensation in my body. “You…what?”
Connor gently kisses me. He nuzzles my jaw and then whispers in my ear, “I had this big romantic production planned out—candlelight dinner, horse-drawn carriage ride in Central Park, down on bended knee, the whole thing—but since you beat me to the punch, I’ll just give you the ring and we’ll call it even.”
A little squeaky noise comes out of me.
He chuckles and kisses me again, drawing my tongue into his mouth, gently biting my lower lip. My heartbeat is all over the place. I place my hands on his chest, and they’re shaking.
When he pulls away, he’s breathing hard. His eyes drift open, and in them all I see is love.
I say breathlessly, “So where is it?”