“You want me to keep your beer in my fridge?”
“I was hoping.”
“And your chips in my cabinet?”
“In case I get hungry after.”
“After the beer?”
He lifted his eyebrows.
“Didn’t I just meet you a couple days ago?” she asked.
“Yeah, and look how well we’re getting along. We’ll be married by the weekend.” He flashed her a winning, if slightly weary, smile.
Ellen rolled her eyes and stomped, stomped, stomped on the tiny fluttering, leaping thing in her chest. “You know, you don’t actually have to try this hard to impress me. I already slept with you twice.”
“I know, but we skipped all the early dates, and I could really use one of those third-date neck massages.”
“The kind where we watch a movie and then I move back behind you on the couch and rub your shoulders, and you offer to take off your shirt to make it easier, and then before we know quite what happened, we’re making out?”
“Exactly. But don’t skimp on the massaging. I have to be seduced slowly, like I don’t really want it.”
“I think you’ve got our roles reversed.”
Caleb flashed her another smile. “Do I?”
“You know, you could just ask me for a massage.” She pried the lid off the vanilla ice cream.
He shook his head. “I swear, Ellen, it’s like you don’t want to be courted.”
“Right. I don’t want to be courted.”
When she bent over the silverware drawer for a spoon, he leaned in close and put his mouth behind her ear. “Suck it up. If you want chocolate sauce drizzled all over your nether
regions and licked off, you have to watch the news and flirt awkwardly with me first.”
Ellen straightened, savoring the molten blush his words ignited. “Fine. But only because I’m going to have a sundae.”
He brushed his lips over the pulse at the base of her throat. “That’s my girl.”
Then he kissed her, and she got so distracted by the taste and feel and smell of him, she didn’t remember to say “I’m not your girl” until he’d already walked into the living room.
“You want a sundae?” she called after him.
“No, thanks. Nana fed me plenty of junk already.”
When she made it to the living room, he was already watching the news. If you could call it that. A red-faced pundit pounded on his desk and made snide remarks about people just like her, and Ellen gave up counting how many repellent opinions he’d expressed after the first few minutes. She kept sneaking sidelong glances at Caleb, trying to gauge how much of the rant he agreed with.
“Quit looking at me like that,” he said.
“I’m not. Like what?”
“Like I eat babies.”
“It’s just …” She wondered how to put it. “This isn’t the news I usually watch.”
“There’s a shocker.”