Page 66 of Crazy Love

“I did,” Mom says. “The two of you are absolutely gorgeous together.”

I grin at Addy and her cheeks flush.

“Cake?” I ask her.

She nods, her lips lifting in a shy smile.

We walk to the house and when we walk inside, we stop in front of the beautiful cake. The design was all Addy’s idea. It’s smooth and has this elaborate beading around the bottom edges that looks like little pearls, but it’s all icing. It’s entirely toopretty to eat, but having had Greer and Wyndham’s cakes before from Serendipity, I know it’s going to be delicious…which is all I cared about. But I’m pretty damn impressed about the way it looks too.

We printed the pictures Sam took and have them in frames around the cake.

“Hey, everyone, come to the kitchen,” I yell, like I have no care in the world, when all I can think about iswhat the fuck is this woman doing to me?

Our guests trickle into the room, and everyone gathers around us. More pictures are taken as we cut the cake together. I feed Addy’s piece to her gently, and I think she’s going to do the same with me, but then at the last second, she smooshes it into my face. I stare at her in shock while she laughs her fine ass off, and I tug her toward me.

“Are you going to help me get this off?” I ask, my voice low.

She reaches out for a cloth to wipe my face and I hold onto her wrist, pausing it in place.

“Kiss me first.” My tone is playful but demanding, and her body sort of sways against me. I remove some of the frosting with my thumb and swipe it over her lower lip.

Her eyes widen and then dart between mine as she laughs. Her tongue peeks out to lick her bottom lip. I get hard instantly and now there’s no way I can back away. Everyone in this room will be aware of my situation.

The tinkling of the crystal amps up and Addy straightens. I put my hands on her cheeks and she stands on her tiptoes, meeting me the rest of the way. When her lips touch mine, it’s like an explosion of color going off behind my closed eyelids. I keep it chaste because I don’t want to embarrass her. I’ve been at weddings before where I saw way more tongue than I wanted to see and I won’t do that to Addy, but goddamn, do I want to. I want to pillage her mouth with mine and never come up for air.

Eventually, we break apart and I lean my forehead against hers. “I hope they do that with the glasses all night, so I can keep having an excuse to kiss you.”

“Do you need an excuse?” She reaches up to smear off the lipstick she left behind.

I smirk. “If I have your permission, I’ll kiss you all night long.”

Her hands drop from me and she turns to get our cake plates. And then she looks at me over her shoulder and smirks right back. “You have my permission.”

Hot damn. It is on.

CHAPTER TWENTY

HEART TO HEART TO HEART

ADELINE

“What is that?” Sam asks Penn.

Everyone has left and we’ve spent the past thirty minutes cleaning everything up. Penn’s parents and the girls helped a lot before they left, so it wasn’t too bad.

“You’ve never seen this?” Penn lifts the blue notebook he’s holding. “I would’ve thought you’d seen it by now. This is gold right here. It’s The Single Dad Playbook.”

“Oh, that’s the book? I’ve heard about it. It’s looking kinda old.”

Penn holds the book up and assesses it. “I guess it has seen better days, hasn’t it? We’ve been writing in it for a few years now and it’s been everywhere.”

My interest is piqued by now. “Who writes in it?”

“Henley, Weston, Bowie, Rhodes…and me.”

“But you’re not a dad, and they’re not single.” I tilt my head and point at him, laughing. “And you aren’t either now. How does that work?”

He chuckles. “Right on all accounts. We started writing in this when we were all single, and yeah, technically I had no business being in the group or the book, but I weaseled my way into both.” Penn lifts a shoulder and Sam and I laugh at him. “We started it when Weston found out he had a son and it’s just continued from there. It’s been like therapy for me at times. I love reading what the guys have to say. When I need help with something or have thoughts on life or whatever, I write it in here.”

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