Chapter 36
36
Natalie
I stretch, my body deliciously sore from Nerf tag and the multipart workout Preston subjected me to last night. We made love three times before falling asleep in the early morning, and now the clock tells me it’s almost noon.
I reach an arm out and encounter—cool sheets.
I roll over and face the empty half of the bed, and even though he could be anywhere—the bathroom, next door, getting me coffee—my stomach knots.
Because it’s only a matter of time until he’s gone gone.
Then the room door opens and Preston walks in, grinning. “Hey, sleepyhead. I brought you some treats.”
I haul myself to sitting, arrange the sheet around my top half as best I can, and take in the glorious sight before me:
A large, extremely handsome man in a T-shirt and jeans, holding out two white paper bags from which delicious smells are emanating.
“Rush Creek Bakery.” He holds up one white bag. “And Carol’s Cakes.” He holds up another. “I know they’re not as good as the ones from that place you went to with your sister, but I thought it would be fun to do a comparison.”
“Did you say,” I tease, “it would be fun ?”
“I did. Look at me, finding the fun all by myself, right?” He heads for the hotel room desk—where I was dancing that first night when he walked in—and starts to take the pastries out of the bags. Then he looks over at me, considering. He tilts his head. “Would it be more fun to eat them in bed?”
“It might ,” I say. “But would that cause you psychic pain? Crumbs and everything?”
He looks from the bags in his hand to the pristine hotel sheets and back again. Then his gaze falls on my hand, which still clutches the sheets to my chest, and his eyes darken. “Well,” he says, considering me with lingering, slow regard, “it might . But that might be canceled out by all the other possibilities that arise from eating pastries in bed.”
I pat the bed next to me, and he kicks his shoes off and slides in beside me, dropping a kiss onto my head. “Hey,” he says. “Last night was amazing. You were amazing. I’ve never said that to anyone before because it never felt true enough to say—but I want you to know. It wasn’t just?—”
He stops.
And I get it. I get why he’s hesitating. I think he was going to say It wasn’t just sex , but if it wasn’t, then where does that leave us?
“It’s okay,” I tell him. “It was amazing for me, too. I want to do it again. Definitely. As soon as I…eat. And shower. And maybe brush my teeth and wash my face.”
That makes him laugh.
“We can definitely do all those things.”
He unrolls the tops of the white paper bags. “I got a chocolate croissant, an apple turnover, and a cream-cheese Danish from each, so we can subject them to careful analysis. It wouldn’t?—”
“—make sense to compare apple turnovers to orange-cream doughnuts?” I ask.
“Ha. Exactly.”
I love that Preston’s idea of fun is careful analysis of these pastries, that he’s being so thorough and rigorous about it all. I love that he’s probably dying to make a spreadsheet right now. I love that he listened to what I said about my favorite pastries, that he thought to bring me pastries for breakfast the morning after, that he told me how he felt about last night (because honestly, most men don’t bother). I love?—
But I’ve run out of words. There’s just this…ache.
“Did you know Carol made pastries?” Preston demands.
“No!”
“I didn’t, either, until Nan—you know, owner of Rush Creek Bake?—”
“Everyone knows Nan.”
“Right. She definitely makes an impression. Well, she said that several years ago she started making cakes because she felt like it wasn’t good for Rush Creek that Carol’s Cake Shop was running a monopoly?—”
I’m shaking with laughter at Preston’s Nan imitation—puffed up and soapbox-y and dead-on.
“So then—Nan says—after she started making cakes, Carol got vengeful.”
I raise an eyebrow. “I love how when Nan does it it’s social justice and when Carol does it, it’s vengeance.”
He grins. “It’s all about point of view. So Carol started her pastry business to give Nan a run for her money.”
“What’s next?” I ask. “I mean, obviously Nan has to do something. She can’t let Carol’s awful behavior stand.”
“Right. It sounds like maybe pies are next?”
I snicker. He hands me a chocolate croissant. “Is this warm ?” I ask, wide-eyed.
“I had them heat them up. They’re better that way, right?”
“So. Much. Better.” If I wasn’t in love with him before, I am now. I lick chocolate out of the little cleft at the end of my croissant. “Mmm,” I moan, then raise my eyes to find Preston watching me.
He carefully takes the croissant out of my hands and sets it on the bag on the nightstand.
“Are you sure ,” he asks quietly, “that you need to do all those other things first?”
And then he leans in and kisses me in a way that makes the correct answer to that question obvious.