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“Just like that.”
“You don’t like it?”
“There’s not much to it.”
“All right, you do better.”
Merritt glanced out the window at the puffy clouds and blue sky. “Maybe Whit and Giovanni were there too. Maybe we started talking over dinner and were still deep in conversation when they were ready to leave, but we wanted to keep talking, so we walked down to the ocean and talked and talked all night. We’d been holding hands and sitting close the whole time, and when the sun was coming up, you finally took my face in your hands and leaned close, gazing into my eyes, and you kissed me for the first time.”
She turned back to Gus, surprised to find him leaning into her space, which caused her to jerk back a few inches.
“Then what?”
“What?”
“What happened after the kiss? Did we go back to my place?”
She pushed him away. “You sure know how to ruin a romantic moment.”
“I assure you, going back to my place would’ve been very romantic.”
She rolled her eyes, but her cheeks were on fire.
“I think you should come up with the rest of the story,” he told her. “You’re good at this.”
“I don’t feel like it. You’ll just ruin it with your perverted version.”
“I’m not perverted.”
“Well, I’m not that kind of girl.”
“What? The kind that spends the night with a guy she’s falling for?”
“Exactly. I wouldn’t sleep with a guy on the first date.”
“But you’d marry one you hardly know.”
“Hey!”
He lay his hand on her knee. “I’m teasing, honey.”
She gritted her teeth. “Stop calling me that.”
He chuckled and removed his hand, but not before little goosebumps had traveled their way up her leg from that brief touch.
“Tell me what happens next,” he said.
She sighed. “We exchanged numbers, and you didn’t even wait a day to call and tell me what a great time you had and how you wanted to see me again. We’ve been inseparable since.”
“I like it.”
“It’s not enough, though. I think there will be plenty of things we still don’t know about each other after only three months, so we can probably fake our way through some conversations, but we should know more than we do right now.”
“Like what?”
“What’s your favorite color?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think knowing my favorite color will prove our marriage is legit?”