Sweet

I put her on her feet and watched her walk around, peeking out the windows, trailing her fingers over the reclaimed-wood desk, the upholstered desk chair, her diploma on the wall—space for the next one just over it. She touched the glued-together shell I’d given her when she was a pretty little fourteen-year-old who’d turned my world upside down with one kiss.

After walking around the room twice she returned, cuddled her hands on my chest and stared up at me. “This room is—?”

“Yours. You’ve got three or four more years of school, and though I’ll welcome you in your sexy little glasses at the kitchen table anytime, I reckoned you needed a room all your own.”

One tear and then another tumbled down her cheeks and her lower lip wobbled.

“Happy crying?” I said, winding that escaping curl around my finger, tucking it behind her ear.

Her hiccup of laughter made the rest of those tears spill, and her nodding smile was the clincher. “So happy. You?”

I slid my arms around her and pulled her close. “I’m the happiest son of a bitch in this whole damn state.” One thin strap slipped off her shoulder, and that coil popped back out from behind her ear, and in our positions there was no hiding what would make me even happier.

She raised one brow and gave me a sharp look. “I think that sofa behind you needs some breaking in.” She stretched on her toes and kissed my chin.

I lifted her just off the ground and strode backward, kissing her, until my calves hit that sofa, where I paused. “In your wedding dress?”

She pushed me down, lifted her skirt just enough to get it out of the way, and straddled me. Eyes shining, she bit her lip on that naughty grin she got sometimes. “Not like I’m planning to wear it again, right?”

I shook my head and wasn’t sure where to start—the one million buttons down the back of that dress or the hundreds of hairpins in her hair. She reached up and started pulling pins out and tossing them to the floor. Buttons it is.

“Sweetheart,” I said, kissing her while threading buttons the size of baby teeth through equally small holes, “I know you don’t believe in luck, but you’ll never convince me it doesn’t exist. Because I know for a fact that I am one lucky man.”