Say Yes (Nostalgic Summer Romance)

“So, is that what this is?” he asked, rolling until he could sweep me into his arms. “Another yes night?”

“I think so.”

“Hmm,” he hummed against my lips before he captured them in a kiss. “Well then, while we’re at it, I want you to meet my family.”

My heart did a little flip. “Okay.”

“And I want to meet yours.”

A double backflip. “Okay,” I whispered.

“So… Connecticut, Georgia, and Oregon.”

“Can we make a pit stop in China?” I asked.

“China?”

“Angela is there…” I waved him off. “I’ll explain later, but there’s no stalling on yes night.”

He chuckled. “Okay, then, yes. China, it is. Whatever you desire, wherever you want to go… consider yes my standing answer.”

“That’s an awfully dangerous promise to make,” I teased, crawling on top of him.

The moment I straddled his waist, he groaned his approval, hands gripping my hips as he bit down on his lower lip. “I like to live life on the edge.”

I laughed, running my hands up his chest and lowering down to cover his mouth with mine.

“I love you,” I whispered, pulling back so he could see the honesty in my eyes when I spoke those words aloud.

“I love you,” he echoed, his gaze just as sincere.

We both inhaled when our lips connected again, breathing in the kiss, and Liam was hard and ready between my legs after the break. All it took was a shift of my hips and the tip of him slipped inside me, making us both shudder at the feeling.

I pulled back to watch him as I lowered down, slicking over him, feeling every inch as he pressed deep inside. His eyelids fluttered, mouth parting as he gripped my hips hard enough to leave a mark.

We didn’t get a single wink of sleep that night.

In the morning, Liam helped me pack the last of my bags, and we took full advantage of our last day in La culla del Rinascimento, strolling through the park and along the river, shopping, eating, drinking, and dancing whenever we heard music.

The sun was warmer. The breeze was cooler. Tastes were richer. Colors were brighter. Every sound was a melody.

As we sat on the same patio overlooking the river where I’d asked Liam to be mine for the summer, drinking wine and eating cheese and gazing into each other’s eyes like a couple of dopes, I found I had a permanent smile on my lips.

Where our story would go next, I couldn’t be sure. But there were two things I knew with absolute certainty.

Wine just tasted better in Italy.

And life just tasted better in love.

Ten Years Later

“I don’t get it,” my little sister said, tilting her head with a frown too deep for her age etched into her forehead.

I chuckled, squeezing her shoulders from where I stood behind her. “What do you feel when you look at it?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I like the colors. They’re pretty.”

“Which one is your favorite?”

“The yellows,” she said, pointing at the canvas. “And the orange.”

“Warm colors. Says a lot about you, Nell Bell.”

She tilted her head the other way before looking up at me. “You painted this the summer you met Uncle Liam?”

I smiled, heart fluttering with a thunderstorm of memories as I looked from my little sister’s bright blue eyes and back to The Art of Hope. It was strange, seeing it displayed again after all these years — especially in an exhibition that housed my most impressive work in my career so far. In many ways, it seemed so juvenile, so inexperienced. I could note a hundred strokes on that canvas that could have been better, could note a hundred ways the painting fell short.

And yet it was my favorite of all.

“I did,” I said. “When you were just a little bean inside Mom’s belly.”

She giggled. “I wasn’t a bean.”

“Were, too. You were this little,” I said, holding up my left hand to illustrate with my forefinger and thumb.

Nella giggled again, and she looked like she had another question on the tip of her tongue but didn’t get the chance to get it out before we were ambushed by a stampede of little feet.

“Aunt Nella!” Kyle said first, wrapping her in a hug that nearly took her to the ground.

“Aunt Nella!” Anna echoed, though she was so slight, her little hug didn’t have quite the effect of Kyle’s.

I laughed at the site of the three of them together, my sister and my children, so close in age they were more like cousins. Nella had just turned ten last month, Kyle was coming up on seven, and Anna was five.

And if the view of those three little beings clinging onto each other and giggling wasn’t enough to melt my heart, the sight of my husband strolling through the gallery archway behind them did the trick.

Liam Benson was the same ornery boy I’d met ten years ago, and he wore that same mischievous smile I’d fallen for the first time I laid eyes on it. Though, now his chestnut hair was shorter, styled with a side part and a bit of gel to keep it in place, his jaw was freshly shaven and those dark eyes shone a little brighter. I loved seeing him in a well-fitted suit like the one he wore now, and it was a daily occurrence now that he was a lawyer for one of the most prestigious firms in Portland.