Unexpectedly His(38)

An exclamation bubbled up from her chest as he dove toward her, smiling. She grabbed a pillow and fought him off, the breath rushing out of her as she tumbled back against the corner of the sectional. He grabbed at his shirt—the one she was wearing—in a misguided attempt to stop her, but she landed a clean hit to his backside. He moved closer, but she continued to pummel his chest, shoulders, forearms. He reached behind her for a pillow to use as a shield, dodging her shots to the left and the right, grabbing for her pillow, finding instead the soft inside of her thigh. She let go a high-pitched protest and fell back against the couch as he tumbled on top of her, both of them laughing and out of breath.

He nodded at the tray on the coffee table. “Breakfast in bed, or rather, on the sectional. I didn’t know what you liked so I brought you a little bit of everything…three tea options, orange juice, yogurt, two kinds of granola, scrambled eggs, French toast and a fruit cup—and me, of course.” Another grin as he leaned in close. “But I already know you like me over easy.”

A hint of a smile touched her lips. “Thank you. For the breakfast. And the over easy.”

“You. Are. Welcome.” He punctuated each word with a kiss that had her reaching for him, wondering if a little flirtation might mean more kissing, until…she saw the tension at the edges of his eyes. “And by the way, your mother called, and my sister told her we were engaged.”

“She did what?” Her body snapped from happily relaxed to strung out like a tightrope. She shot up like a rocket, her tone tense and clipped. “I never planned to tell my family we were engaged. How did this even happen?”
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Nick sat down next to her and rubbed at the back of his neck. “Apparently when you didn’t answer your cell last night, your mom decided to call the Smart Cupid office…”

“Of course she did.” Her head dropped into her open palms. How humiliating. A grown woman being tracked down by her mother.

He peeked through her fingers. “And we’re supposed to be there tomorrow. By five.”

“Tomorrow?” Her heart accelerated into a full-blown panic. “But the party isn’t for another two weeks.” Tomorrow by five. She wasn’t ready. There were too many facts she hadn’t told him yet…like the fact that she’d been engaged to a man whose taste in women ran to the kinky, or that her father had been recently incarcerated. “Did she call here? Did you talk to her?”

Nick scrubbed his face with both hands, looking like he was barely holding on to his cool. “Yes, she called here, wanting to congratulate us on the engagement, and you were sleeping—what the hell was I supposed to do? Hang up and pretend I’d moved to Siberia?

She drew in a shaky breath. “No, it’s okay.” Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. Don’t freak out. “What did you tell her?”

“First, I told her you’ve been busy having orgasms all over New York City.”

She fisted her hands in his damned Yankees shirt. “Seriously, what did you say?”

“I told her we’d be there by five.”

“You told her what?”

“What should I have said?” he asked with a trace of irritation in his voice. “Six weeks of engagement on my end and a commitment to your family event on yours—that was our deal.”

“Yes, but…as my date, not my fiancé.”

He held up his hands in a kind of mock surrender. “How was I supposed to know that?”

Hells bells, they were never going to be able to sell this one. She’d been engaged once before, but they’d dated for seven years and ended up a total disaster, so the likelihood of her making the same commitment eight months later was statistically improbable.

Hells.

Bells.

She leaped off the couch and beelined across the room. She needed to think, to recalculate. Better yet, she needed the next two weeks to master the sexy and work up the nerve to explain to Nick about her family and the party and the dominatrix. Now what was she supposed to do? Confess? What if he backed out?

Nick strode up behind her, put his hands on her shoulders, and she jumped. “Okay, you need to relax. We had a fantastic night last night, so let’s not create any trouble this morning.”

“Let’s not create any trouble?” Her voice crept up an octave, and she whirled around to look at him. “Trust me, Nick, we are not ready for my family. Certainly not tomorrow. If you don’t count the times we’ve literally bumped into each other at the office, we’ve really only known each other for six days—my mom will take one look at you and know you are so not my kind of guy.”