Page 182 of The Nanny and the Beefcake
It took everything he had in him not to dance around and pump his fist in the air.
“Why are you decimating the larkspurs, Raz?” she asked, concern in her eyes.
Hope and joy washed over him.
“I came to pick some flowers for you. You like these. You like the color. It’s our color.”
She stared at him. “It is.”
He took a step toward her as a blue-violet hue surrounded them. “Why aren’t you with Doug?”
He had to ask. He had to hear her say it.
“I don’t want to be with Doug,” she answered, taking a step toward him. “The benchmark is—”
“Total bullshit,” he supplied.
She brushed a tear from her cheek. “Yeah.”
He closed the distance between them. “I don’t want you with Doug or anyone else.”
“You don’t?”
“No,” he answered, then he caught sight of one of the stone stacks Sebastian had built. “Those rock stacks tell us when we’re on the right trail. But I’m here to tell you that every path is the right path for me as long as I walk it with you.”
“Do you mean that?” she asked, her gaze swimming with questions.
He handed her the mess of wildflowers. “I want you. I don’t know who I am without you, plum. I don’t want to go back to the pain. I want to live in this safe space with you and Sebastian—a place where nothing hurts, a place where nothing can touch us. And the donkey knows, plum. He knows, and that’s why I can’t let you go.”
That crease returned to her brow. “I was right there with you until the donkey part.”
“Beefcake knows that Plum is meant for him, just like I know you’re meant for me. I want you, Libby. I can barely breathe without you.”
She smiled up at him with tears in her eyes. “I think this is the part where you kiss me.”
He cupped her face in his dirt-speckled hands and stared into her amber eyes. He leaned in, his lips hovering above the corner of her mouth, so ready to lose himself when the hum of a helicopter rumbled through the air.
Good old Briggs got it done.
Libby gasped as the sound intensified. “Why is there a helicopter landing in the front yard?”
He smiled against her lips. “The kiss will have to wait. This, plum, is the part where you trust me.”
Twenty-Seven
Libby
“Plum,it’s time to wake up. We’re here.”
Libby sighed and nuzzled into the warmth of Erasmus Cress’s embrace. She wasn’t ready to open her eyes—not yet. She curled into Raz, and he stroked her cheek. “I had the craziest dream,” she murmured, sliding her hand beneath his T-shirt.
“Did you?” he purred.
She loved his morning voice. That sexy British rasp with a touch of gravelly gruffness made every inch of her body hungry for his touch and desperate for his kisses.
She drew lazy circles across his hard abdominal muscles. “I dreamed that I was whisked away on a helicopter, had a delicious dinner waiting for me in Aspen, then strutted my stuff onto a private jet.”
“That sounds like some dream. Do you remember anything else?” he asked, pressing a kiss to her temple.
