“Okay, ew,” Pixie teases. “There are children here.” She looks around at where there are clearly no children anywhere. “Okay, well, there’s a goat here. Get a room.”
“Oh, we will,” I say with a wink. “Later.”
She mocks a gag but not before I catch the look of joy on her face.
“Sorry we’re late!” Kayla says with a smile as she and Daren climb up the bleachers. “Somebody was perfecting a recipe and just couldn’t leave the inn’s kitchen until he had it perfect.” She playfully rolls her eyes at Daren as they scoot in beside everyone else.
“Only because somebody insisted on adding potato soup to the lunch menu.” He winks at Kayla.
“Hey.” She points at him defensively. “Potato soup is a classic and everyone is going to love it.”
“Yeah. Because I perfected the recipe in the kitchen just now,” he says.
“Aw, lovebirds,” Pixie sighs dramatically. “Aren’t they adorable?”
I watch Daren kiss Kayla’s nose and I make a face. “They’re something all right.”
Pixie scoffs. “Like you two are any better.”
I hold a hand up. “Oh, please, Miss ‘You hang up first… no you hang up first’! You and Levi are disgusting on the phone.”
Jack takes the hand I have held up and clucks his tongue as he examines it.
“What’s this?” he says, holding up my ring finger.
Earlier today, I slipped Grandma’s gris-gris ring off my ring finger and replaced it with the beautiful red stone ring Jack bought me. It’s a reminder of that trip—and all the moments that brought me to this very happy point in my life—and it looks perfect on that finger.
“Why?” I say. “Does it freak you out to have a ring you bought me on my wedding ring finger?”
He watches me for a moment. “Not at all.”
He’s serious, which both terrifies me and makes me want to sing. God, I love him.
Biting back a smile, I shrug. “Good. Because I figured it was time to take off Grandma’s ring since, you know, I feel all settled now.”
He smiles. “Do you now?”
I nod. “I do.”
He leans in and lowers his voice. “And would that have anything to do with me?”
“No,” I say with a smile. Then I lean over and whisper in his ear, “It has everything to do with you.”
Jack might have been all wrong for me and my plans, but he was just the kind of wrong I needed. The right kind of wrong.
Turn the page for an excerpt of the first book in Chelsea Fine’s Finding Fate series,
Best Kind of Broken
Available now
1
Pixie
If my bastard neighbor uses all the hot water again, I will suffocate him in his sleep.
I listen as the shower finally goes off and huff my way around my room, gathering my shower supplies. I don’t politely wait for him to leave the bathroom, oh no. I stand outside the bathroom door—which has steam escaping from the crack at the bottom—with a carefully applied scowl and wait.
Still waiting.
The door swings open to a perfect male body emerging from a billow of hot fog. His dark hair is loose and wet and frames his face in a haphazard way that manages to look sexy despite the fact that he probably shook it out like a dog before opening the door, and of course he’s wearing nothing but a towel.
Kill me now.
I peek into the bathroom, totally pissed, and block his exit with my body. “A thirty-minute shower, Levi? What the hell?”
A smile pulls at the corners of his mouth. “I was dirty.”
Oh, I bet.
“I swear to God,” I say, “if I have to take another cold shower—”
“You shouldn’t swear to God, Pix.” He brings his face close to mine and the steam from his skin dampens my nose and cheeks. “It’s not nice.”
This close up, I can see the tiny silver flecks in his otherwise bright blue eyes and almost feel the three-day scruff that shadows his jaw. Not that I want to feel his scruff. Ever.
I curl my lip. “I want a hot shower.”
“Then shower at night.”
“I’m not kidding, Levi.”
“Neither am I.” His eyes slide to my mouth for a moment—a split second—and there it is. The electricity. The humming vibration that never used to exist between us.
He snaps his eyes away and pulls back. The damp heat from his body pulls away as well, and some stupid, primal part of me whines in protest.
“Now, if you’ll excuse me…” He waits for me to move out of his way. I don’t.
I jab my finger at his chest. “I haven’t had a hot shower for three days—”