Page 101 of RomeAntically Challenged
“I didn’t expect you home until later,” she said. “How was the dance?”
“Guess which dad got the first dance,” he asked.
Smiling, she turned, expecting him to back up, which he did not. She got an up-close-and-personal look at just how happy he was. “You?”
“Me.” He placed a hand on either side of her waist, then brushed a tender kiss across her cheek, and herbaa boomsbecame louder, and closer together with an urgency that made her dizzy. “And guess who got the last dance of the night?”
“You?”
“Technically all three of us dads shared the last dance, but the last slow dance of the night went to me.” He kissed the other cheek. “And guess who didn’t threaten any teenagers, even when they danced with my daughter?”
“I’m so proud.”
“Me too. It came close, but I managed to hold it together.” This time when he spoke, it was barely a whisper. And when he kissed her, it was on the tip of her nose. “And guess whose house Paisley wants to spend more time at?”
“Yours?”
“Yeah.” Another gentle kiss, this one against her lips, gentle and sweet and over way too quickly.
“I’m so happy for you, Emmitt,” she whispered. “I know how hard you’ve worked to make tonight special for her and to show her how much you love her. The best part is she knows now. You deserved a night like this with her, and that you did it with Gray and Levi will only make the memory that much sweeter.”
“Tonight was pretty perfect,” he said. “Except for one thing.”
“Gray was there?” she teased.
“No. You weren’t. And I wish you had been,” he said, and the bottom dropped out of her stomach, like it always did when he said things she wanted so badly to be true. “For the pictures, the dancing, the memories, all of it.”
“Don’t say it if you don’t mean it,” she warned, telling herself more than him.
“Look at me and tell me that I don’t,” he softly challenged, and she looked and—fairy godmothers be true—he meant every word. It was right there, staring back at her, everything she’d hoped to find but had been too afraid to acknowledge—love.
She wasn’t saying it was theforever and ever amenkind of love. But what she saw was enough to make her breath stall out in her chest. And the longer she looked, the more apparent it became that along with the hunger and desire—was a vulnerable need to share his world with her.
As she realized how much she wanted to be on the givingandreceiving end of that, her chest relaxed and all the air left her lungs in a whoosh.
“Yeah.” He smiled. “It caught me off guard too. So much so that tonight, when I saw people taking selfies under the arbors, I wanted to take one too. With you.”
“Emmitt Bradley, award-winning photojournalist, taking a selfie?” she teased.
“What can I say, with you I want to try new things.” He moved closer and lowered his voice. “All the things.”
Annie had it all wrong. Emmitt wasn’t romantically challenged. He was romantically choosy. And he’d chosen her.
“Let’s start with the selfie.” Because that was as far forward as her head would allow her to fantasize. Too bad her heart was one selfie away from forever. “What would we be doing in this selfie?”
“Dancing.” He took one of her hands in one of his and slowly moved them to the center of the kitchen. “You would have been wearing that red dress that’s hidden in the back of the closet, the one that still has the tags on it, and I would have taken you in my arms, and then as we started to move, I’d snap the camera to capture every single emotion I experienced when dancing with you for the first time.”
She looked down. “I don’t think the red dress is going to happen anytime soon.”
“That’s just it. When I came through the front door and caught you swaying in the kitchen, covered in flour and my shirt, I realized that even in the red dress you couldn’t look any sexier.”
Annie remembered singing a very bad, very embarrassing rendition of “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys while shaking her booty. “How long were you watching?”
“Long enough to make sure your dance card was open,” he said, sliding an arm around her back, settling it low on the curve. “Put your arm around me, Anh.”
“I’ll get you all dirty.”
“I like it when you get me dirty, but I love it when you hold me in your arms,” he whispered, and she complied, because that was, quite possibly, the most romantic thing anyone had ever said to her.
