Page 40 of Fake it 'Til Christmas
The crowd bursts into laughter.I nearly choke.
“Yeah, that sounds like my brother,” Daisy confirms.
“In my defense,” I say, “you were squeezing every lemon like it owed you margaritas—and there was no tequila around.”
“You asked me if I fondled everything as I fondled fruit.”She shrugs, wickedly casual.“I obviously accepted the challenge.”
My throat tightens.“I remember.”
“Oh, do you?”she says, all innocence and faux surprise, as if she didn’t just toss a verbal grenade into the middle of my frontal lobe.“Because your face went very ...flushed.Like you’d just had a vision.”
“I did,” I say, voice lower now, leaning slightly closer.“It involved you.And a grocery aisle.And an unfortunate misuse of the organic mango display.”
Winnifred’s smile goes dangerously wicked.“That explains why you knocked over that entire bin of kiwis.”
“They were stacked poorly.”
“You were flustered.”
“You were inappropriate.”
“I was curious,” she counters sweetly, trailing one fingertip down the side of her champagne flute.“It’s not every day a man looks like he’s debating the moral implications of fruit-based foreplay.”
I nearly choke on air.My grandmother giggles.The crowd?Absolutely enraptured.
“I’m pretty sure I asked you out just to shut you up,” I say, tilting my head.
“I said yes because I thought you were secretly a priest having a crisis,” she replies with a straight face.
That gets a gasp from someone.Daisy chokes on her drink.I feel the laugh bubble up inside me before I can stop it.
“Yet here we are,” I murmur, glancing down at her.“Engagement party and all.”
Her gaze catches mine, and for a second, we’re not performing.We’re just there.Together.Close enough that if I moved even half an inch, I could taste the sugar on her mouth from the champagne.
“Guess you survived my fruit fondling after all,” she whispers.
“Barely.”
Her eyes darken just enough to make me feel like we’re seconds away from crossing a line we weren’t supposed to blur.
Fuck it—I’d let her blur every line if she kissed me right now.
Before either of us can lean in, someone calls out, “When’s the wedding?”and the spell snaps like a rubber band to the back of the neck.
Winnifred straightens, brushing nonexistent lint from her dress.“We’re still debating destination versus local,” she says with perfect poise.
I nod, lifting my glass.“Depends on how much fondling is allowed on the registry.”
She elbows me hard enough to make me stumble.“Behave.”
“Impossible.”
A pause.
We both break into grins at the same time.Hers is radiant and biting.Mine probably looks like a man who knows he’s falling in love with someone who will absolutely destroy him—and still wants her to do it.
The crowdawwslike we’re five minutes from a proposal, and the ring’s already in someone’s champagne flute.The kind with a perfectly timed rainstorm and a sweeping orchestral swell.
