She made a face. “I won’t wear them.” She let him massage her foot for a moment longer, then tucked both feet under his thighs in the chair and drew him closer so that they were nose to nose. She kissed his forehead. “Everything okay?”
“No, I don’t think so.” He told her about Quinn’s medical condition. Her eyes glazed with tears and he pulled her down onto his lap.
“Oh, no. Poor Quinn. What are you going to do?”
“About him? I don’t know.” And frankly, he didn’t want to think about it at the moment. He lifted her chin with the curve of his index finger and tried on a smile. “But you… I know exactly what I’m going to do about you.”
“Hmm.” She pressed a lingering kiss to his mouth. “Did Raffi’s little ploy work?”
“What little ploy?”
“He told me if I wanted to get you to the altar, I had to be a tad”—she held her fingers a millimeter apart—“manipulative. Make you think there’s a chance I’d leave you.”
“There isn’t?”
“For a smart man, you sure can be an idiot sometimes.” She laughed and slapped his chest. “So? Did it work?”
Gabe thought of the last time he was asked that question by Quinn during his retirement party. Thought about how lonely he’d been back then and he hadn’t even known it, how colorless his life had been without Audrey to brighten it up. He never wanted to go back to that dull, lonely existence again.
“Yeah,” he admitted, “it worked.” He reached into his desk drawer for the plane tickets, but had to bite the inside of his cheek to fight a smile. He’d been played beautifully, and he loved her all the more for it. “We leave tomorrow.”
“Vegas?” She fanned the two tickets out and grinned at him. “So are you just carting me off like a caveman, or are you gonna ask me like a good, honorable SEAL should?”
Gabe pretended to think about it for a half second, then scooped her into his arms and carried her through the door adjoining his office to their bedroom.
“Gabe, no. We have company!” She laughed when she hit the bed with a bounce, but the laughter soon turned to moans as he settled between her open legs and dragged his lips up her neck to her ear.
“Caveman,” he said and nibbled her earlobe. “I’m not a SEAL anymore.”
And for the first time, that didn’t bother him in the least.