Loving Valentine: A Novella

Minus the newsboy cap, he looked straight out of the TV show Peaky Blinders.

It was a hot look.

He was HOT.

Reaching for my coat, I returned his soft smile. His eyes filled with as much anticipation as I felt.

“Let me.” He stepped forward into the apartment and took hold of my coat.

With my back to him, I bit my lip, admitting only to myself how much I enjoyed his gentlemanly behavior. I’d never had a date hold a door open for me before, never mind my coat. Once I had my arms in the sleeves, Micah settled his hands on my shoulders and gave me a little squeeze. “You ready?”

I turned to him, inhaling his spicy, delicious cologne. He was close enough to kiss. “I’m ready.”

Those gorgeous gray eyes of his dropped to my mouth.

The air suddenly crackled between us.

“Should we go?” I whispered just as he seemed to lean in for a kiss.

Micah blinked rapidly, as if coming out of a daze. He took a step back. “Yeah. Uh, yeah, let’s go.”

Outside, he hailed a cab and when we got inside, he gave the driver an address I didn’t recognize. “Where are we going?”

Micah smiled and reached for my hand. “You’ll see.”

I stared at our entwined hands as we sat in tense silence while the cabbie made his way through the city. It wasn’t tense as in ‘bad’, it was tense as in electric. Micah casually brushed his thumb over the top of my hand, back and forth, back and forth. Shivers sprinkled down my spine at the caress.

He was turning me on with a mere touch.

I didn’t know if I let out a disgruntled sigh or what, but suddenly Micah was smiling at me, somewhat smugly. He raised our hands to his lips and kissed the back of mine.

I melted.

Oh, yeah… minutes into the date and already he was getting behind my defenses.

Dangerous, dangerous man.

Thankfully, a mere fifteen minutes later, the car pulled up to a stop in front of a block of red brick apartments in Allston. After he paid the cabbie, I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the building. “Where are we?”

Micah took hold of my hand and repeated, “You’ll see.”

As he led me into the building and up the stairs, I worried that he’d brought me to his apartment for our first date. It was not only presumptuous; it was way too fast. Heart racing, I bit my tongue, hoping I was wrong.

He took us to the top floor and then opened a door at the end of the hall that led to a dark flight of stairs.

Confused now, I stayed quiet and followed him up the steps. He pushed opened the door at the top, leading us out onto the roof of the building.

Shock. Amazement. Wonder flooded me.

The roof had been transformed into a fairytale wonderland.

Garden trellises covered with flowers and strung with ropes upon ropes of fairy lights created a cocoon around a picnic area. There were candles placed here and there, too, their flames dancing in the soft breeze.

Pots and vases of peonies covered the roof space. And in the middle of the trellis arrangement was a fur blanket with a picnic basket on top of it. There were several bowls of golden wrapped Ferrero Rocher. A bucket with a bottle of champagne in it. Two champagne flutes.

And soft indie rock music played from a dock beside the picnic basket.

My dream date.

He remembered.

I didn’t expect to react like I did.

The sob just burst out of me.

Suddenly I was in Micah’s arms as I cried against his chest. “Cupid, tell me these are good tears?”

I nodded, unable to speak through the intense emotion clogging my throat.

Micah’s voice was gruff. “I have loved you for a very long time.”

Finally, I raised my head, my fear still prodding me even as I felt myself letting go. “You don’t know me anymore.”

“I do,” he replied fiercely, his grip on me tightening. “I know you. And I miss you like crazy. I’ve been walking around for years missing a piece of me, an immense piece of me. And that emptiness would go away unless I have you. I know I promised not to push, not to move too fast, but I needed you to know—”

I pulled his head down to mine and cut off his desperate words with a kiss.

He groaned, lifting me into it, turning it wild and voracious. I clung to his neck, my feet now inches off the ground.

When he finally lowered me to the rooftop and we parted to draw breath, I confessed, “I still love you too. And that you did all this for me…” I gestured around us. Somehow it had changed everything. It was a reminder of who he really was to me. The person who made me feel special and seen. “Micah, I don’t want to go slow with you. I want to stop wasting time and start making up for the time we lost.”