Chapter Twenty-Four #3
“Wait… just checking… did you want this to be a hypothetical question?”
He chuckled. “Yes. It’s hypothetical.”
Emmy’s heart raced. He was only touching her fingers, but her whole body reacted. Determined to play it cool, she raised an eyebrow. “Just asking out of curiosity?”
“Yeah.” He maintained a straight face, keeping his expression politely interested. She gave him points for that. “I’m trying to share your interests. Get to know you better. That’s all.”
“Well,” she said, watching his index finger journey over her thumb, to her wrist, and back again. Her nerve endings felt like they were sparkling at the contact. “First of all, you wouldn’t call it ‘sex.’ You’d call it ‘making love.’”
It was clear to her that the disgusted sound he made in that moment was completely involuntary. He tried to school his expression back to what it was, but his lip stayed stubbornly curled.
“Any um… alternatives to that?”
Emmy tried to look contrite as she shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t make the rules.”
He let out a put-upon sigh. “Okay, how would I go about convincing the heroine of a romance novel to…” He paused, grimaced. “… make love with me.”
Her libido was all for putting the poor guy out of his misery and telling him she was already raring to go. But teasing him was proving to be fun, too. Decisions, decisions.
“Grand romantic gesture,” she said.
His expression turned speculative. “Like… I hire a band to stand outside and play Elton John songs while I shower you with rose petals?”
Emmy stared at him. Finally, she managed to say, “I have so many questions. Why Elton John? Why outside? Can the band not go indoors?”
Will shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s always outside in the movies, isn’t it? Kissing in the rain while the music swells or whatever.”
“What am I supposed to be doing while you’re dumping loose flower petals all over me?”
He contemplated the question. “Get naked, I guess. We can have sex… sorry, make love on the lawn while the band watches. If they miss a single note, they don’t get paid.”
She laughed at the image he was putting inside her head, and playfully slapped his shoulder. It was a good shoulder. A sexy shoulder. All strong and supportive.
“That sounds fun and… inventive, but I meant something like the Scrabble picnic. You were supposed to bring up the Scrabble picnic, and then I was supposed to pretend I’d forgotten all about it, and then we were going to agree you’d already been romantic so we could have sex. ” She pointed at him. “Don’t say it.”
“You were the one who told me I had to say it.”
“Well, don’t say it anymore. It’s weird hearing it out loud. I guess it sounds sexier when you’re reading it in a book.”
“Yeah, it must.” He ran his hand over her hair, stopped to tug gently at the ends. “Didn’t you say you only ever went on Scrabble picnics with your family?”
“Yeah. So?”
“So… I don’t think it counts as a romantic gesture. Not if you’ve been doing it with your family. Plus, it was your idea, not mine. I need to come up with my own thing.”
Was he serious?
“No, you don’t,” she said quickly. “You don’t need your own thing. The picnic was good. It was great. It can be our thing now. I’ll tell my family to suck eggs.”
“Nah, I can do better.”
How had this gone off the rails so quickly? Had she really ruined her own opportunity for hot sex by choosing banter over sincerity? Blasphemy!
“Just to be clear,” she said, “I am not asking you to do better.”
“It’s part of the rules. You said so yourself.”
“I was joking. Or flirting. I was flirt joking.” Emmy put her hand on his arm. His sexy, sexy arm. “You do not have to do anything to woo me, I promise. I’m wooed. I’m already there.”
He narrowed his eyes at her. “You don’t think I can do it.”
“What?”
“You don’t think I can be romantic.”
“That is not true. You are so romantic,” she said, a little desperately.
“That sounded doubtful. I think you doubt me.”
“Will, are we really about to have our first fight?”
“No. Because I’m pretty sure we fought plenty before this.”
Emmy groaned and collapsed back into the soft, welcoming cushions of the couch. “You’re not going to let this go, huh?”
“No. I’m not. One, because I’m going to come up with something so romantic it’ll knock your socks off.
And hopefully everything else.” He wiggled his eyebrows and Emmy snorted.
“Two, because I just ate dinner, I’m tired, and I’m emotionally drained.
And three, corny as it sounds, I want the first time between us to be meaningful. ”
Her heart turned to mush. How could she push back against that? She couldn’t, of course. And he knew it.
“Alright, you win.” She sat up once more. “What do we do in the meantime? More board games?”
“Maybe. First, I want you to tell me what you’re planning for your business.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, show me what you have so far. Take me through it.”
She assumed he was using the readily available distraction to move the conversation away from sex, but it quickly became apparent that he was genuinely interested.
Before long, she was fully immersed in her own plans, showing him more of her logo designs, the beginnings of her five-year plan, target audience, budget.
In the back of her mind, she chastised herself for expecting him to brush her off.
Those were the lingering effects of Andrew’s influence, and she didn’t want her ex anywhere near this place or this man.
Later, with the lights all turned off and her notes carefully tucked away in her room, Emmy lay awake and listened to the songs of insects outside her window.
She couldn’t tell how serious Will was with all his romance talk, though she hoped it meant he really did have romantic feelings about her.
Maybe even love-type feelings. She knew she wanted to be with him soon, regardless of whether he could track down a voyeuristic Elton John cover band.
To borrow a phrase from May, she had found her “It.” In her own thoughts, she was able to admit that she wanted to make love with him.
She drifted off to sleep imagining his hands on her.