Page 62 of The Love Dare
Tyler folds their fingers together. “I’d still pick you in a bikini if I had the choice.”
“You’ve seen me in a bikini a million times.”
“What’s your point?”
Winnie rolls her eyes even as a flush warms her cheeks. Tyler lifts their joined hands and wraps his arm around her, pulling her close as they slowly cross the gangplank.
“Are we sure this is safe?” he asks.
“Why wouldn’t it be?”
“I don’t know.” He frowns. “Taking a boat into a lake literally filled with icebergs? Doesn’t that seem a bit risky?”
“Are you—” She glances up at him, a grin on her lips. “Scared?”
“No. Of course not.”
“You are!”
“I’m not.”
“Just admit it!” She pokes him in the ribs. “The King of the Ice is afraid.”
“Okay, first, I’m the king of the ice rink. Give me a pair of skates and I would own this shit. Second, have any of these people seenTitanic?” He drops her hand to cup his fingers before his eyes like a set of binoculars. “Iceberg, straight ahead. And to the left. And the right. And, oh fuck, we’re surrounded.”
“Stop!” She giggles and tries to push him the rest of the way across the platform. But the man is made of solid muscle. He doesn’t budge. “They know what they’re doing.”
“Do they?”
“Yes, you big baby.”
This time, when she shoves, he relents and stumbles the rest of the way onto the boat. Then he grabs her hand again, a bit of excitement flaring in his eyes.
“Okay, but if we’re doing this, we’re doing this.”
She stares at him blankly.
He tugs, gently urging her forward. “Come on. We’ve gotta do the thing.”
“The thing?”
“TheTitanicthing.”
“Sink?”
He responds with an exaggerated eye roll before guiding her toward the front of the boat. When they reach the dinner table, he maneuvers around it, pausing only for an instant to swipe one of the blankets piled on the ground. Suddenly, she understands. Tyler doesn’t stop until they’re arranged at the very tip of the bow, her back perfectly aligned with his front as he wraps the wool throw fully around them like a warm cocoon. Frigid winds whip at their cheeks, but Winnie is perfectly toasty. She relaxes into his body, not a single bit of her wishing to be anywhere else in the world.
He nestles his chin against her shoulder, turning so his breath caresses her ear. Then in the softest voice, he sings, “Come, Josephine, in my flying machine.”
She turns toward him, surprised. “You remember that?”
“Mostly I remember spending about twenty-five minutes silently whispering the name of my evil old chemistry teacher to myself while Kate Winslet took her clothes off because you were lying about six inches away from me in one of those skintight pajama sets you used to torture me with, and I was desperate not to get a hard-on. I was relieved as hell when the boat finally hit the iceberg and we moved on to the action portion of the movie.”
She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth, hiding her smile. “I wasn’t.”
“I know. You scrunched your face up and made the most adorable little whining sound the entire time they showed the hull scraping against the ice.”
“I did?”
