Page 78 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
“You will.”
“Candace. Bonbon.” He sighed and dropped down on one knee.
Her eyes went wide as she flailed her hands at him.
“Oh. Ha!” Laurin laughed nervously. “I’m not proposing. I just thought I should be below you. Like, it seemed like I would be more trustworthy down here if . . . well, now it doesn’t seem trustworthy at all,” he sighed. “Spend Christmas with me and my family. Do you have any plans next week? Anywhere you need to be? I heard you were working in other bakeries this month. Are you going home to another one?”
Candace shook her head, feeling like she should ask how he knew that but knowing better than to waste what time they had.
“Then stay the week. Do Christmas with my family, pick up guest spots at the Food2Love offices or work in my bakery or just relax, take a vacation, and then do New Year's with me. I’ve got tickets to the aquarium.”
“Oh?” Candace said with a smirk, her adrenaline cooling back off as Laurin snaked his arms behind her knees and walked her up to him so he could rest his chin on her stomach. Yeah, maybe this position was a little better. “You already got the tickets? Who were you going to take?”
Laurin grunted. “Manon. Obviously. Did I tell you she’s staying until February now? She’s driving me mad.” But he said it with a grin, proving he was really over the moon about his family being together. “Stay the week. Give me that. Promise me a week, and I’ll promise I won’t leave, either. We can start with that. That’s easy, right?”
Candace eyed him shrewdly. “And then what?”
“And then you can leave if you want. Or you can stay, and I’ll promise you a week again. You can leave, and I’ll still promise you another week, if that’s what you want. We’ll figure it out. One week, Candace. You can leave me first, but give me one week.”
Candace rolled her head back to stare at the gray sky between the branches of the scrubby pine. It sounded nice. Perfect. She’d long ago decided that her ex had never loved her and everything he’d ever said was to trick her into marrying him, and none of it had ever sounded this good. Her throat felt dry as sandpaper as she said, “What if I can’t love you? What if I’ve just been hurt too many times?”
He straightened up with a pained grunt and started to say, “Now, I don’t believe—”
“Oh my god, your leg!” Candace cried out, rushing to his side to brace him. “Why would you kneel like that, Laurin?”
He laughed loudly, scooping her up so she had no choice but to throw her arms around his neck and lean into him as he carried her in the direction of the pavilion. “I may not be able to play in the World Cup ever again, but I can kneel as well as anyone else. And you may not think you can love again, but I’d rather you try instead of just giving up. One week. A test run. A try-out.”
“You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“Nope.”
“And you’re not bothered by the fact that I haven’t said ‘I love you’ back?”
“Nope. I’ve worked a lot harder to get to know you. Now it’s your turn.”
She sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. This did feel good. Very comfortable. A week wasn’t so big of a deal.
If she could fall in love at all, she could probably fall in love in a week.
And her brain was telling her that was a bad thing, but her heart? Her heart was thinking maybe it could survive one more break. Maybe it wouldn’t be broken at all.
“Have you talked to that guy?” she asked, attempting a casual conversation as she delayed the inevitable. A week wasn’t a huge commitment, but it was also her life. “The Spaniard?”
That had him pausing and frowning. “What are you talking about?”
“Caballero, the soccer player who fractured his tibia a couple weeks ago. You know him, right?”
He frowned. “Oh, I do, but we’re not close.” He brightened up a little. “Have you been watching football?” He saidfootballfirmly, like he was willing to fight her about it.
“Not really,” she said, grinning at his insistence, like he’d let her have almost anything but not the wordsoccer. “But when you said you were having nightmares about it, I found an article about what just happened to Caballero, how they’re already predicting his career is over. You should call him. If your positions were reversed and you had just been injured and he was the one who was having a good life after his career had ended, wouldn’t you want to hear from him?”
“Have I told you yet today that you’re incredible?”
Chapter 26
Frustration bubbled inside Laurin.
She was right. He had envisioned a future where she left everything behind to be with him. And yes, he rationalized it with the fact that he had a family and a shop and a job right here for her, while she had nothing in New Jersey. It wasn’t fair that this was assumed by him, and it wasn’t fair that the commitment was all on her, but he couldn’t help it that he had this advantage. He could only do his best to prove that he intended to make her feel as secure as possible in a life with him and his family. He didn’t know how he’d do that, other than to agree to whatever terms she wanted to put on things, but he knew now what to focus on.
