“You’re funny.”
“No, the last part.” He didn’t answer so I lifted my head and looked at him. “One of the things you love about me?”
We locked eyes.
“Yeah,” he said.
“What else do you love about me?”
He had that soft look, his eyes were melty and he had his own satisfied expression that was supremely sexy but I had the feeling that he was very alert.
“I love your ass, your hair and your legs,” he answered.
“That’s it?”
“No, I also love your eyes.”
The eyes he loved narrowed. “That’s it?”
“Maybe I should say I especially love your ass.”
I pulled up but he rolled me over and pinned me under his body.
“I just wanna make sure I know what’s happenin’ here,” he said. “Is this sleepy after-sex talk and you’re gonna drift away to dreamland any second or are we havin’ a serious conversation?”
We were having a serious conversation all right. I wasn’t sleepy anymore, I was freaking out and my heart was hammering in my chest.
“We’re having a serious conversation,” I told him.
“Okay, then now I wanna know if you’ve had the opportunity to throw up the defenses or are we gonna have an honest conversation, one you’re gonna participate in?”
Hmm, that was a much more difficult question to answer.
He looked at me.
“I didn’t think so,” he said.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
“For what it’s worth, I’ll share my intentions. You and me, we aren’t practice for the real thing. It isn’t that too much is at stake with family and friends, it’s because I love you. You’re funny, beautiful and you care about people. I like the way you look at me, especially when you think I don’t notice it. I like that we have history and our kids will have a big family and share that history because there was never a time when their Mom and Dad weren’t together. If you were a terrible lay, I might have second thoughts but you and I are dy***ite together. I intend to marry you and spend the rest of my life with you. If that freaks you out, tough, because now that we’ve started this, there’s no goin’ back.”
After a couple of beats, I realized I wasn’t breathing so I made a conscious effort to start again.
Lee was watching me.“Do you have anything you want to say?”
I had a lot of things I wanted to say, none of them I was ready to say.
I asked, “When did you know you loved me?”
He sighed and slid off me onto his side. He brought me with him so we were face-to-face.
“I knew that last time you tried to seduce me before you started avoiding me. When I was home on leave and you tackled me in your Dad’s living room and I told you that I thought of you like a sister.”
My heart lurched at the thought. That had been the most hated, humiliating, horrifying memory of my life.
“I didn’t tackle you,” I said.