Page 68 of Rival Hearts

“Meaning?” He ran his hand up and down my arm which was laid across his chest. “We’d have exceptional children?”

My breath caught in my throat. “Something like that.”

“Hmm…” he murmured, kissing the top of my head. “Wanna play a game with me?”

Relaxing at the change in subject, I grinned. “Hide the sausage again?”

“Oh, I’m sure we’ll be hiding that again. Maybe in a few different places.”

A laugh escaped at his implication, and I hit his chest. He rolled us so he stared down at me. The depth of tenderness in his face surprised me.

How had I gotten lucky enough to have this moment? My insides unfurled and bloomed, reaching for the sunlight in his gaze.

“That’s not the game I want to play right now.” His lips brushed mine. I wrapped my arms around his neck and yanked him closer.

“All right, player,” I said when we broke apart. “How do we play?”

“It’s called This or That. I give you two scenarios, and you tell me your preference.”

“How do you win?”

He laughed and braced himself on his forearms above me. “There’s no winning. It’s a getting-to-know-you game. I used to play it all the time when I was traveling.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please, play it with me too.”

With his fingers, he pushed a few strands of my hair back and shook his head. “So many assumptions in your response.”

When I made a grumbling noise, he kissed both of my cheeks before brushing his lips across mine again. “I played it on buses, trains, airplanes, in bars… not in beds. Feel better?”

I framed his face, and I stared into his deep brown eyes. “I don’teverwant to feel like just some girl again.” The pain I’d felt when I was younger wasn’t something I could relive. No one had known about what had happened, my feelings, the way he’d treated me with such indifference. I wouldn’t be that girl again. Above all else, I needed to be important this time.

His expression softened, and he nuzzled the hollow of my neck. “You wereneverjust some girl,” his rough voice whispered in my ear.

My stomach fluttered, back on the roller coaster at the crest of a hill. “I wish I’d known.” My heart ached for the seventeen-year-old girl who’d cried herself to sleep over Grady, who’d thought maybe she’d gotten the connection between them all wrong. I’d pushed all those memories down, buried them as deep as the experience itself, told myself nothing with him had been as good as I remembered. Instead, I poisoned my thoughts until any reminder of him made me angry, not sad.

“I swear to you I’ll never make you feel that way again.”

His clear gaze said he meant it, and I wanted to believe him. At the back of my mind, Trent’s words about Grady getting an offer he couldn’t refuse, a better offer, played. The reminder wasn’t loud enough to make me regret what just happened, but I couldn’t let the words welling up inside out. Last time I’d laid myself bare, I’d been burned. Once was a mistake, twice was foolishness. And this time there’d be more witnesses to any foolish mistakes.

“This or That,” I whispered. “I’m going to win.”

He placed a quick kiss on my lips. I loved that he couldn’t stop doing it, that it seemed instinctual. How many times had I wished for this when I was a kid?

He rolled to his side, and he cradled his head with his palm. “Always so competitive.”

“Give it to me,” I said with a wicked grin.

“Oh, I’ll give it to you. But first we play.” He kissed my shoulder. “Big house or nice car?”

“House.” I narrowed my eyes. “Please tell me you’re not a car guy in this scenario?”

“I think I might be a ‘neither.’ You’ve seen my house and truck, right?”

I laughed and leaned over for another kiss. “Okay, again.”

“Cat or dog?”

With a grimace, I admitted, “Dog.”

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