Jasmine Guillory - The Proposal

He didn’t look at her, but he could feel her watching him, listening to every word he said. She didn’t touch him, but the softness in her voice felt like a caress.

“A sudden heart attack. That’s terrible. I’m so sorry.”

He nodded, very glad that they were in a car in the dark and she couldn’t see the tears in his eyes.

“Thanks. Anyway, the car. I think I mostly realized I couldn’t live in fear anymore. I mean, sure it could get broken into outside the taqueria, or I could have an accident any day to or from work. Plus, I bought the car in honor of my dad—how did it honor him for me to be afraid to go anywhere in it? Good God, I can’t imagine how ashamed he would have been if I didn’t want to go to a taqueria because I was scared of what might happen to my car, you know?”

Why the hell was he talking to her about his dad? He never talked about him, not even to Angela or his mom. He’d decided to stop talking—or even thinking, for the most part—about his dad almost six months after he’d died. It had been too hard for him to deal with otherwise.

Fucking journalists, they knew just the questions to get you going.

“I’m glad you had good friends.” She put her hand on his, and he thought she was going to say something else warm and sympathetic, which might be more than he could take right now. “I’m also glad you discovered that taqueria, because oh my God was that food good.”

He laughed, relieved she’d changed the subject.

“So am I. I love that place. I try not to go there too often. I always eat too much when I’m there.”

They talked about tacos the rest of the way to her apartment.

“I know this is insanely bougie of me, but so be it,” she said as she opened her apartment door. “Do you want some sparkling water? It always makes me feel better after I eat an enormous meal. I have like four different flavors, minimum.”

She kicked her shoes off by the door, so he followed suit.

“Hmmm, that depends. What flavors?”

She threw off her leather jacket, walked into the kitchen and opened the fridge, while he sat on the couch.

“Grapefruit, lemon, berry, and mango.”

He sighed dramatically.

“Lime is my favorite, but I guess I can settle for grapefruit.”

She grabbed the water out of the fridge and brought it over to the couch.

He drank some water, put his glass down on the coffee table, and put his arm around her.

“Sparkling water is good at settling your stomach after a big meal, but do you want to know something else that works for that?”

She rose her eyebrows.

“Hmmm, what?”

He ran his hand up and down her bare arm.

“Some good, healthy physical activity.”

She took another sip of her water and set it down.

“Oh wow. I’m so glad you told me that. I’d always read the opposite, that you shouldn’t eat before any strenuous activity.”

He shook his head vigorously.

“Oh no, no, that’s outdated advice. I’m a doctor, see, so I know all of the new and up-to-date research on this.” He reached up and tugged on one of her curls, released it, tugged on another one.

“Mmmm. I’m so grateful that I have you, a fancy doctor, to tell little old me about this.” She pulled him against her.

“I’m so glad you appreciate me.” He kissed her neck and then trailed kisses down to the hollow between her breasts.

“I definitely do.” His thumbs were on her nipples, hard peaks beneath the thin fabric of her shirt. She closed her eyes.

“The more strenuous, the better for your digestion, really.” He pushed her back against the couch and lifted her shirt.

“Wow, that’s so good to know. What . . .” She sucked in her breath and paused before she could continue. “What should we do? We could go for a nice walk.”

He pulled her shirt off and tossed it to the side. Her breasts were full and luscious inside her sheer black bra. He couldn’t stop looking at her. And touching her.

“A walk is a good idea. From what I remember from last time, the walk to your bedroom is really long. It took us a long time to get there. That seems like the perfect length for a walk to me.”

She smiled up at him.

“Whatever you say, doctor.”

He stood and took her hands to pull her up off the couch.

Chapter Twelve

. . . . . . .

“You should be honored. My friends were very nice to you tonight,” Nik said.

Carlos and Nik were walking to his car the following Friday night. He’d texted her before leaving the hospital to see if she wanted to go out, and she’d texted him back that she was out with her friends, and he should come join them. He’d really wanted to see her, so he went. But that had made him nervous that this was more than a casual hookup thing to her.

Maybe he should talk to her about it, even though he hated bringing up stuff like that. But they’d been seeing kind of a lot of each other, and he didn’t want her to get the wrong idea. After the taqueria last Friday night, he’d hung out at her house well into Saturday afternoon. And then they’d met up for burgers on Tuesday night and gone back to her place for some healthy adult exercise. And they’d been texting a lot this week. Were they spending too much time together?

Granted, she didn’t act like the women he’d gone out with in the past who had wanted to be his girlfriend: she hadn’t insisted on weekend plans far in advance or pushed him to invite her over to his house or told him he was the kind of guy who would be a great father. But making him spend an hour with her and her friends when she knew all he wanted was to be taking her clothes off was getting close.

“That was them being nice ?” he asked. He was sort of kidding, but . . . only sort of.

She laughed.

“They only quizzed you for like five minutes.”

It had felt like far longer.

Sure, he’d met her friends right after the baseball game, but that was before they’d started sleeping together. Did this whole “come meet me and my friends” thing mean she was getting the wrong idea about what he wanted here?

If he had to end things with her, he was going to be so mad. He hadn’t had sex this good, with someone he actually enjoyed spending time with in . . . shit, since he could remember.

“Courtney gave you more than one compliment. That’s basically a declaration of lifelong devotion coming from her.”

When he’d told her how much he’d liked her spicy cupcake, she had told him that said something good about his character.

“Well, I’m glad, I guess, but please don’t kill me if I say I’m glad they both had to get up early tomorrow morning so I could get you alone.”

She looked at him out of the corner of her eye and smiled.

“That sounds promising. What did you have in mind?”

He grinned as they approached his car.

“Well, you know me. Before I do anything strenuous, I need a good dinner. What are you in the mood for?”

“Do you want to go out? Or get takeout?”

He put his arm around her.

“I can do either, but the idea of takeout on your couch sounds pretty great right now. It’s been a long week.”

She put her arms around his waist, and he pulled her close.

“How’s your cousin doing? Everything okay there?”

He nodded.

“Thanks for asking. She’s hanging in there, but I’m always on edge about it. Every time I get a call from anyone in my family, I jump. I would say that I can’t wait for this to be over, except that the best outcome is for it to be like this for another nine or ten weeks, which seems unbearable right now.”

He sighed and opened the passenger door for her.

“Thanks for listening to me ramble about my family, I appreciate it. I can’t really talk to them about it, because then they all flip out.”