parked in front of the theater, pumping out the smell of fries and bratwurst.
“Perfect,” Zara said. “I’m starved.”
She acted like she hadn’t eaten in days, and this was after they’d already polished off an extra-large popcorn, huge red Slushies, and several boxes of candy. Rory was confident that his mother was going to love Zara—but given that few things made Beth Sullivan happier than feeding people, she was going to be even more over the moon about Zara and her appetite at the dinner table every Friday night.
Which reminded him… “You’re in for dinner with my family tomorrow night, right?”
“Of course. But only if you’re sure that your parents won’t be thrown off by having to add another person on short notice.”
“We’re Sullivans. The more the merrier.”
“What should I bring?”
“Just your beautiful self. My mom always cooks for a thousand. And I’m sure she’ll be pulling out the red carpet for you, so if you happen to have any favorite Irish dishes, I’ll let her know.”
“Why would she want to roll anything out for me?”
“She knows I wouldn’t bring you to dinner if you weren’t important to me. And I’m sure my brothers and sisters have been singing your praises to my parents this week. Plus,” he added with a smug grin that he guessed would push her buttons, “now that you’ve finally done the impossible by taming the biggest prize in the family, who wouldn’t be impressed by you?”
“I’ve certainly won the biggest—”
He kissed away the rest of her sentence, which surely would have been stuffed full of expletives and insults.
The woman taking orders in the food truck cleared her throat to get their attention. “What would you like to eat tonight?”
Zara pinched him before he could give one of his inappropriate, fourteen-year-old-worthy responses. “Two bratwurst with everything, an extra-large fries, and a chocolate shake.” She turned to him. “Your turn.”
“I’ll have the same.” After he paid, he said to Zara, “We are going to have one heck of a grocery bill.”
“We’ve only just started dating,” she was quick to point out. “It’s not like we’re moving in together.”
Their shakes came up in the pickup window, and she had just put her hands around the cups when he said, “Move in with me.”
“What?” Zara fumbled the cups, and they tipped. Rory set them back to rights before they fell and splatted all over the sidewalk.
Though he knew she’d heard him perfectly the first time, he repeated himself. “Move in with me.”
But from the stunned look on her face, she was still wildly thrown off by his proposition. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“If you moved in, we could swim wild together every single day. I’d make sure there was always chocolate cake in the house.” He leaned in to whisper, “We could alternate whose body we eat it from. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I’ll lick it off you. Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, you can lick it off me. As for Sundays…” He let her see everything he felt for her as he said, “Sundays will be for staying in bed all day long. Even after we’ve polished off the cake.”
Their orders were called, and he was almost positive that her legs and arms were shaking as she took the tray over to the plastic tables and chairs on the sidewalk.
“If someone told me a year ago that I was going to fall for you,” she said in a voice that was notably breathless from the erotic picture he had just painted, “I would never have believed it.”
“Is that a yes?”
She rolled her eyes. “You really are a piece of work.”
“A maybe, then?”
She shoved a French fry between his lips. “Maybe this will keep your mouth busy.”
Knowing it would be better to give her time to see the light, instead of continuing to push her on moving in with him, he made her laugh instead with stories about the scrapes he and his siblings had gotten into when they were kids. Then she regaled him with the tale of how her first attempt at making glasses frames had been such a disaster that they’d melted while she was wearing them on the beach, leaving her with orange and red circles around her eyes for a month.
The easy conversation and laughter didn’t stop the sparks from flaring between them, however. Fortunately, after they walked back to her cottage and Zara closed the door behind him, she said, “Oh look, there’s some cake left. And since it’s Thursday, that must mean it’s my turn