Page 27 of Make Her Mine

I can’t pull my gaze away from Harlow’s. I’m watching her digest everything I just said.

And she’s not denying any of it.

I hadn’t thought all of this through, I was just thinking out loud. But everything I just said is true.

“You’re right,” Harlow finally says. “That does make sense.” She takes a breath and looks at her mom. “How’s that sound?”

Peyton shrugs. “I’m sold.”

I glance at my mom. “Me too,” she says with a nod. “Makes total sense.”

“Got it,” Scott says from over the phone. “I’m keeping a tally of how many times I’m asked about this today. That’s how many caramels I expect to get tonight when I get home.”

My mom’s caramels are famous. But Peyton laughs. “You can’t have any extras. We’re barely keeping up with the demand as it is with the festival and all the extra people in town.”

“Then you’ll have to reward me some other way. You know I’m going to get asked about this more than you are.”

“I can’t wait to talk about it,” Peyton says, her eyes twinkling with mischief. “But you know I’m always up for a good reward.”

“Mom,” Harlow groans. “Please.”

Harlow glances at me and I mouth ‘brat’.

Harlow actually laughs.

“We need to go fill our friends in,” I tell her. “They’re going to be getting a ton of questions too.”

She sighs. “Fine.” She bends behind the bakery case and slides two orange scones into a to-go package.

“I want blueberry, not orange,” I tell her.

She glances up. “I wasn’t getting you one.”

I shake my head. But watch as she slides a blueberry in with her two.

She also grabs a to-go cup of coffee.

“Vanilla latte,” I tell her.

“You do not want me to make you a latte,” she tells me, pouring her own coffee.

“You’re not good at it?”

“I will spit in it.”

I grin and move around the counter and in next to her to make my own latte. “See, there’s no way it would take more than a month for us to get serious,” I tell her, as I reach over her head, and very into her personal space, to reach the vanilla syrup.

“What do you mean?”

“I figure it would only take about thirty days for us to decide if we’d rather kiss or kill each other. Once we decide that, we’d be good to go. I would have no delusions about you being any kind of submissive, sweet, helpful girlfriend. You’d already know that I don’t need a submissive, sweet, helpful girlfriend. There would be no learning curve. No disappointments. You’d just be you, I’d be me, and we’d already know it all going in.”

She looks up at me, not trying to move away from me. I also keep my body very close to hers and just meet her gaze steadily, my arm still up.

Finally, she nods. “That’s a very good point,” she says. “Except…”

Of course there’s an except.

“Except?”

---