Page 78 of Along Came Amor
She gave him an arch look. “You don’t get rules.”
“That doesn’t seem fair, but fine. What do I get if I play along?”
“Is everything a negotiation with you?”
“Yes.”
She blew out a breath. “What do you want?”
He suppressed the urge to grin. “I want to buy you gifts.”
She responded exactly as he’d expected her to. “Absolutely not.”
He threw out another term he knew she wouldn’t accept. “No underwear.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ll play by your rules if you don’t wear any underwear on this trip.” He held out his hand. “Starting now.”
Her mouth fell open, and while the look in her eyes was outraged, her cheeks turned pink, and he knew she was thinking about it.
“Only if you don’t wear any underwear either,” she shot back.
La profe had surprised him with that. “All right.” Fighting a smile, he dropped his hands to his belt and began to undo the buckle.
Apparently she hadn’t expected him to agree so readily because she gestured wildly for him to stop and looked over her shoulder, as if to make sure Enrique wasn’t hovering nearby. “Never mind,” she said quickly. “We both keep our underwear on.”
“Then I want to spend the evenings with you.” This was what he really wanted. “I get to choose the activities. Nohanky-panky, as you called it, but outside of that, you go along with my plans.”
Her eyes sparked and her chest heaved, but she nodded. “Fine. Provided we sort out all the required wedding stuff each day, you can plan how we spend the evenings.”
Jackpot.
“Then we have a deal.” Roman stretched his hand across the aisle for her to shake. After a moment’s pause, where she bit enticingly on that lush bottom lip, she grabbed his hand and gave it two quick pumps. Then she drew back and muttered something like, “What have I gotten myself into?”
She flipped to a new page and began to glue magazine cutouts onto it. Roman thought it would’ve been easier to doit digitally, but she seemed happy, so who was he to judge? Maybe he could buy her some fancy scissors or something.
If she ever allowed him to give her presents.
“Roman?”
He looked up from his spreadsheet. “¿Sí, mi cielo?”
She blinked, like she was flustered by the term of endearment, but her face was carefully blank. “You and Ashton were on a telenovela together?”
He was a bit surprised she hadn’t drilled Jasmine for information about him, but he was happy to tell her. “Almost twenty years ago.Recuerdos Peligrosos.”
Ava squinted, like she was trying to remember it. “Which one was that?”
“We played brothers on a ranch.”
“And one brother was kidnapped by the father and presumed dead, and then the other brother fell in love with the first one’s pregnant fiancée?”
Her summary made him smile. “That’s the one.”
“I missed it when it aired. I must have still been in high school, probably around the time I moved into my dad’s house to help take care of my sister.”
“That sounds like a lot of responsibility for a teenager,” he said mildly. She’d shared enough for him to suspect that her relationship with her father and stepmother bordered on toxic.
