said, eager to feel his arms around her.
She stumbled on the way to an empty space on the floor. Ethan’s eyebrow went up. “Tipsy already?”
She sighed. “Afraid so.”
He laughed. “This should be fun, then.”
But when he drew her into his embrace, she could feel all that solid muscle and taut control and knew with absolute certainty that she was in safe hands.
“Ethan, are you mad at me for talking to Cass?” she found herself asking.
“Not now,” he said, his breath feathering across her cheek. “Let’s just live in the moment.”
“But you aren’t happy with me, are you?” she persisted.
He looked down into her eyes. “I’m still worried, that’s all. And we’re not going to resolve this tonight, so let’s leave it for another time. Why don’t you just enjoy tormenting me?”
“Tormenting you?” she asked, intrigued.
“Sure. Don’t you know that holding you this close and knowing that this is where it’s going to end is pure torture for me?”
“A lesser man might conclude it didn’t have to end here,” she whispered.
She felt his smile against her cheek.
“Then it’s a good thing I’m not a lesser man,” he said.
“You could reconsider,” she suggested. “Go a little wild.”
He laughed. “Believe me, darlin’, that idea holds a lot of appeal.”
“But you’re not going to give in to temptation, are you?”
“Afraid not.”
She sighed and rested her head against his chest, listened to the steady beat of his heart, wondered what it would take to scramble his pulse so badly he’d have to give in.
One of these days, she decided, she was going to do everything in her power to find out.
15
“Do you think Ethan will hire a stripper for Boone’s bachelor party?” Emily asked plaintively over breakfast on the morning after her bachelorette party. “I don’t think I’d like that, especially after the guys crashed my party and kept me from having my last fling as a single woman.”
“There was never going to be any fling,” Gabi said sternly. “You’re all talk, little sister. You’d never do that to Boone.”
Emily smiled, her expression dreamy. “You’re probably right. Why would I want to cheat on perfection?”
“Oh, gag me,” Gabi said.
“I think it’s sweet that she’s all caught up in the romance,” Samantha said. “That’s the way it should be. Watching you and Wade being all sensible and practical, well, it’s a little scary. What happened to being crazy in love?”
“We are crazy in love,” Gabi insisted. “We’re just mature.”
“Uh-oh,” Samantha said, catching the glint of annoyance in Emily’s eyes. “She doesn’t mean you’re immature, Em. Just that all couples are different, right, Gabi?”
“Absolutely right,” Gabi said hurriedly.
“Whatever,” Emily said, taking another sip of her coffee. “Let’s get back to the bachelor party. What if Ethan does invite a stripper?”
Samantha chuckled at her sister’s genuinely worried expression. “That doesn’t strike me as Ethan’s style,” she reassured her sister, then thought about it. “But I don’t think I’d be all that thrilled about it, either, now that you mention it. I wouldn’t want my man ogling a naked woman right before our wedding.”
“Exactly,” Emily said.
Gabi listened to them and shook her head. “You could order a cake and jump out of it just to see what’s going on,” she suggested mildly.
Emily’s expression immediately brightened, taking her ludicrous comment seriously. “Great idea! Samantha, you do it. I don’t want Boone to think I don’t trust him.”
Samantha frowned at the pair of them, Gabi for coming up with such a ridiculous idea and Emily for seizing it like a lifeline. She knew her younger sister well enough to know that Emily was unlikely now to let go of it.
“I am not jumping out of a cake,” Samantha told her flatly, though she’d taken on more embarrassing jobs to pay the bills in her early days in New York.
“It would dazzle Ethan,” Gabi suggested, getting into the spirit of things, or maybe trying to pacify Emily by siding with her for once. “You told us yourself he seems to respond to the unpredictable side of your nature, to say nothing of the glazed over, gaga looks he gives you every time you walk into a room. And that’s without ever seeing you naked.”
“Exactly,” Emily enthused. “And you wouldn’t have to be naked. In fact, that would be tacky, but you’d look fantastic in a bikini. I’ll even pay for you to get a spray tan.”
Samantha studied her sisters incredulously. “You’re really serious about this? You want me to jump out of a cake at Boone’s bachelor party just so I can