Total pages in book: 26
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 25827 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 129(@200wpm)___ 103(@250wpm)___ 86(@300wpm)
That was the plan, but...we've already made it to the restaurant, he's handed his keys to the valet, and I still haven't found the perfect moment to tell him the truth.
Aargh!
The host walks us to a table near the window, and the bread comes out before we ask for it, and the waiter calls me miss even though I'm forty-two and we both know it. We sit in front of each other, and I feel like I'm fourteen again rather than forty-two. Not because he makes me feel shy and embarrassed or giddy, but I just feel so, so bad and awkward. Elliot Wheeler's the nicest man, and—
“So...” Elliot says, leaning his elbows on the table.
He smiles at me, and for one moment I actually wait, and I'm even begging myself—
Please, please, please.
But there's just nothing. Or it's like my heart's permanently dysfunctional, with how it only races for the wrong person.
“The ground rules.”
What ground rules?
“I've waited for two years for this, and I don't know if this will happen again. So, Rule #1—you're not allowed to use your official-record voice on me.”
“Um—”
“That's a great start. You don't say um in court. I'll take it.”
He's being ridiculous, but it's also the kind of ridiculous that almost has my lips twitching.
“Rule #2—if at any point you want to bail, you say bail and I drive you home and we never talk about this again.”
I open my mouth, but of course he doesn't let me get away with saying bail this early.
“Rule #3—I get to ask you one question that nobody at the courthouse knows the answer to. And I'll go first to make it fair.”
Okay, I really have to smile now. His idea of fair is obviously the kind that lawyers like him appreciate: it's advantageous to him, not to me—
“What's your ideal guy?”
Elliot asks it so suddenly that the answer just comes flying out.
“Not you.”
Elliot winces. “Ouch.”
I'm wincing at the same time, my hand already at my mouth. “I'm so sorry.”
“Your turn,” he says, and the wince has become a smaller version of his courtroom grin, brave and barely banged-up.
Oh, finally.
It's the very moment I'm waiting for—
“Ask me whatever you want.”
I forget what I was planning to say the moment I hear him ask that.
Ask me whatever you want.
“Sir, madam.”
The server is by our table, setting down the appetizers, and I'm so thankful for the distraction because right now, I can already feel myself fading and fading from the present...as the past draws me in.
Five months of dating Nate, and I'm at the treadmill in the private gym in his home, trying to catch my breath while also trying but failing to remember one important thing.
“Please remind me why I'm doing this again?”
These past five months have been the best time of my life. Nate makes me feel happy and cherished in a way I've never felt before. But at the same time, those five months have been the most exhausting. I've quit my job and said yes to being his wife when I found out that he's migrating, and I believed him when he said it's easier to take care of the paperwork if I'm his wife.
Those things, I easily got. But what I didn't understand was this.
Weekly classes of karate and twice-a-week lessons at the shooting range. A crash course on driving every type of vehicle there is. And then there's this: two hours daily of working out in his gym, and while I love how the last five months have made me look incredible in a bikini...
Nate straightens off the mirrored wall at my question. He's sweating as well, having done weights while I was on the treadmill. He's ditched his shirt a while back, and he's dressed only in his sweatpants. It's one of the few times I see him bare-chested, and honestly, it's hard to look his direction when he's like this. He's always beautiful, but he's even more beautiful like this, and—
Gulp.
When he's this close, it's so much harder to concentrate.
“You're doing all of this...because it's my idea of the perfect bride.”
Riiiight.
“And you want to be that for me.”
He slowly leans forward, one hand bracing on the rail of the treadmill, and my heart races as he gently nips my lip.
“Don't you?”
I do. Of course I do. But—
“What about you?” I ask. “Don't you want to be my perfect husband?”
“I already am.”
Oh, this man's confidence...
It's honestly at a whole different level.
“And how do you know that?”
“Because of this.”
I don't have the chance to ask him what he means, with Nate neatly executing some kind of athletic maneuver that has him on the treadmill, facing me—
“Nate?” I really have a bad feeling about this all of a sudden. I feel like he's about to do something cra—aaaah!
The belt jolts forward, and I stumble with a gasp, his arm going around my waist before I could grab the rail. I'm running towards him, he's running backwards, and yet he still manages to grab a fistful of my hair and then we're kissing!