Nash Brothers Box Set - Carrie Aarons Page 0,136

taste the salt of my tears as I kiss him, and I’m blubbering as we make up.

“I’ll tell anyone you want me to that I love you. I’ll run into Kip’s during the breakfast rush and shout it out loud.” Bowen sets me down, backing me into my foyer.

I chuckle against his mouth. “I think that might be overkill. I’d settle for the lunch rush, though.”

“Deal,” he murmurs, tucking the single lily behind my ear.

Collecting myself, as much as a woman assaulted with so much love can, I stare up at him dreamily. “How did you even get all these into my place?”

Bowen winks. “A magician never reveals his secrets.”

“Presley gave you her key, didn’t she?”

He shrugs. “She may have.”

We both laugh. I can’t stop staring at him, at how rugged and handsome he looks in the middle of all these pretty flowers.

“I love you, too, you know.” The minute the words leave my lips, a weight lifts off my heart. “I’ve been waiting a long time to tell you that, again.”

Bowen takes my face between his hands, those turquoise eyes searing into mine. “Never stop saying it, ever again.”

“So, I know I said I wanted you to take me out, and not just come over late … but now that we’re here …”

It could be his all-black attire that’s making me feel like the wild teen he once turned me into. It could be the dozens and dozens of flowers blossoming on my first floor. Or it could just be that Bowen Nash has the magnetism of every species in the animal kingdom, he’s that drop-dead hunky.

Because right now, I really want him in my bed, naked.

“Oh, you didn’t think this apology came with makeup sex, did you?” Bowen smirks. “Because I was just going to kiss you good night and go home.”

“Were you?” My fingers work to unzip the back of my dress, the sound echoing off the wall and causing heat to pool in Bowen’s eyes.

He licks his lips. “Yeah, okay, you convinced me. Make-up sex sounds like the best way to seal this deal.”

A breathy laugh escapes my lips as he lunges for me, hauling me up and over his shoulder to go in search of my bedroom.

While Bowen’s apology and the make-up sex we were about to bring the house down with are sincere, there is still that niggling feeling of doubt in the back of my mind. I try to push it away, lock it up for another time, but it’s still there, itching at me like a newly healed scab.

He still hasn’t explained his ten-year distance. I know that, eventually, we’ll have to talk about it. That just like not settling for the booty call label, I also won’t settle for his excuse of not being able to tell me. I won’t be able to settle for not knowing the entire truth.

But tonight, I’m letting myself be carried away, literally. By Bowen, by the flowers, by the declaration of love. Because I deserve it. We deserve it.

It’s been too long since the purest form of love existed in my life, and I’m taking it at face value tonight.

30

Bowen

Main Street is aglow with the flicker of its real gas street lamps as the first cool night of fall has Lily shivering in her sweater.

“I should have brought a real coat. But I wanted to keep denying it was really moving into the winter months.”

I shrug out of my leather jacket and wrap it around her shoulders. “That’s the kind of thinking that will help you catch pneumonia.”

“But it’s a good thing my boyfriend has a jacket to warm me with.” She smiles up at me, and I fake shiver in my button-down.

Lily laughs as we walk up to Carlucci’s, the nicest restaurant in Fawn Hill. It wasn’t much, no crystal stemware or wine by the bottle, but their marinara sauce was out of this world and the service was excellent. The family who owned it were also good friends of my parents, and both Lily and I had come here plenty of times growing up.

Taking her to dinner was a risk I was willing to take. There was a real possibility that Eric Grantham would begin his crusade to ruin me like he’d promised if he ever found out I was sniffing around his daughter again. But … after spending so much time with Lily, I almost didn’t care anymore. I was a grown man, no longer a little boy quaking in my boots