Page 29 of Starting Back
“I don’t know about that.” I brought her wrist to my lips and kissed across her knuckles. “Staring at that mouth is so distracting, you could do anything you want to me right now and I wouldn’t stop you.”
The urge to pull her into my arms and cover her mouth with mine, not giving a single fuck if we were in a crowded restaurant or not, barreled over me.
“Tourists don’t stand a chance against you, do they?”
“As I’ve told you,” I said, keeping hold of her hand, “I don’t take tourists out, especially not for a whole day. I’m breaking all my rules for you.”
She coughed out a laugh.
“I’m breaking rules I never knew I had since I met you. Still not sick of me yet?”
I smiled when she squeezed my hand.
“I’m still working on giving you the best vacation story that I can. I’m only warming up.”
I grabbed her hand when she tried to slip it away.
“And no. Not sick of you. Not even close.”
Instead of my usual cracking a joke or shutting down when anyone brought up my parents, she made me want to tell her more. She made me forget about that agitation I always had when I didn’t know what to do or where to go next.
A woman like her made you want to stop and stay—even when you knew she couldn’t.
ELEVEN
KRISTINA
“Can I ask you something else?” I leaned my elbow against the inside of the passenger door as I turned toward Leo.
“You can just ask, Kristina.” He laughed, lifting a shoulder. “At this point, we can leave pretense at the door, right?”
The side of his mouth curled, and I almost forgot my question. He sat with his arm stretched out, shifting it as he kept the wheel straight. My eyes followed the swivel of muscle covered by lines of black ink from his bicep to his wrist. I fixated on his fingers against the steering wheel, how they flexed as he held it steady, the same fingers that twisted inside me last night until I came apart in his mouth.
“Are you okay?” He angled his head to squint at me.
“Fine,” I squeaked out as I turned the AC vents toward me in a futile effort to bring down my body temperature from the hot as hell memory.
“You look a little flushed, babe. Want to jump in the pool and cool off when we get back?” He flashed a cocky grin as his gaze slid to mine.
“I’m not flushed.” I scowled, my attempted denial pointless since the heat rushing up my cheeks had to be turning them a bright red.
I ignored the rush of warmth in my chest when he called me babe—and the confusion over how natural it seemed—and cleared my throat.
“What’s your story? Like, I’m divorced, so I assume people our age have some kind of history…” I trailed off. I wanted to ask if he was ever married or engaged, another question that was absolutely none of my business but couldn’t help asking him anyway.
“Are you asking if I have a girl in every city? No, since that’s a lot of work,” he joked, smirking as he kept his eyes on the road.
“I know you don’t. I mean, you could, no judgment, just…curious.”
He nodded as he turned his truck into the Turtle Bay parking lot.
“I was almost married once. In Vegas, as cliché as that sounds. We were dating for a while and ended up at one of those chapels as a joke. I asked if she wanted to just do it, and she got very angry with me and said no before breaking it off for good.”
“In her defense, that doesn’t sound like the most romantic proposal. Not that the proposal gives you any real clue about what marriage would be like.”
Colin proposed on the big screen at a Buffalo Bills game in front of all our friends. It was a big show that took a lot of planning, but even then, it felt like just that—a show.
Maybe proposals were a good indicator of what you were in for if you said yes, but I was too naive to notice.
