Carolina never came out of her room after she’d finished her show, so Charlie ended up eating both sandwiches. No point in starving. He did his own show, half hoping she’d call in, but she didn’t. The encounter with the disgruntled fan at the coffee shop was still on his mind, so he pulled some punches on his advice, hating the way it came across. As if he’d had all of his brains sucked out through his ear. But that was pretty much how he felt after the double whammy of revealing his new tattoo and declaring point blank that he was in love with Carolina. Obviously neither one had done a lick of good and he was at the point where he couldn’t fathom his next st eps. The tools weren’t working. He needed a new game plan. Maybe a whole new platform. How to date a nice woman who is actually into you. And the stupid tattoo started itching as it healed. It made for a d epressing evening, that was for sure. Lo and behold, as he was watching something both lame and irritating on TV, he glanced up to see Carolina standing at the edge of the living room. He’d never seen that particular expression on her face before. A little vulnerable, a lot gobsmacked, and yet, still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Not because she had a face that could rival a Vogue model. But because she didn’t. She was completely one of a kind. And he’d recently confessed that he was in love with her. What was she going to do with it? The things unsaid burned between them, draping everything with a fine tension that slowly choked him alive. He opened his mouth to say something—anything—when his throat froze. He didn’t want to throw down another flirty, shallow one-liner, the kind that had always come easily when around her. “That was a dirty rotten trick you pulled earlier,” she finally said. That got his throat working. “Which one, when I made you lunch or the one where I tried to prove my sincerity with ill-advised body art?” “The one where you told all my viewers that you were in love with me so I’d look petty and mean if I didn’t give you a real chance.” “Ah. That one.” He squeezed his eyes shut to stop the laugh threatening to spill out. Likely she wouldn’t appreciate the hilarity of her statement the way he did. But seriously. She thought he’d done it for leverage. If he’d truly thought that would work, he’d have done it eleven months ago. The irony was killing him. “So what am I supposed to do now, Charlie? What? Tell me.” She looked so ravaged by indecision that he couldn’t stand the distance between them any longer. Unfolding from the couch, he crossed to her and without hesitation, pulled her into his arms, tucking her into his embrace as if he never meant to let her go. And he wouldn’t if she’d just unbend long enough to realize that he wasn’t the flight risk here.
“Hey,” he murmured softly into her hair. “You don’t have to do anything. I’m the one slinging around declarations of love that fell on deaf ears. If you want to forget I said anything, I’m good with that.” She pulled back sharply, searching his face with her shattered gaze. “Deaf ears? Why do you think I’ve been shut up in my room this whole time? I can’t forget you said that. It’s r eplaying in my head at such a high decibel, I can’t think.” But she was still here, in his arms. Not st epping out of reach. His heart did a little wobbly spin and resettled precariously in his chest as if it might actually fall out at her feet if he moved too fast in the wrong direction. “Sounds like you need to eat,” he told her decisively, which earned him a baleful stare in return. That did make him laugh, and he didn’t mind that she’d probably guessed a weight had just rolled off his chest. “To drown out the sound of my voice in your head. A distraction.” “Yeah, that’s your tried and true technique all day long, isn’t it?” she muttered without any real heat. “Distract and bewilder.” “Entertain and...” He trailed off as something flashed through her gaze. She was being real with him, and his first response shouldn’t be flip. “Do I confuse you? I don’t mean to.” She made a face. “Yeah, Charlie. You do. Always. Like now. What are we doing standing here like this?” “It’s called a hug.” Okay maybe he couldn’t actually turn off his sarcastic gene, not around Carolina. It was how their relationship worked. And he liked it. They both did, whether she’d actually gotten to a place where she’d be willing to admit it or not. “I wanted to touch you. Why is that confusing?” “Because you touching me makes my head explode, that’s why,” she shot back and yet she still hadn’t danced out of reach. Must not hate it too much. “That’s a good enough compliment to emblazon on a T-shirt. I’d wear that baby twenty-four seven.” “You would too.” Her eye roll widened his grin, and like that, they were back on track, premature and foolishly dropped I love yous aside. “I have reservations at Vacone and tickets to La Traviata. Sound like a good enough distraction for you?” “An opera? Really? Have you met me?” “What’s wrong with opera? It’s culture.” “I have nothing to wear, that’s what. I don’t even own a dress that would work. Or shoes.” “Wear jeans.” This suggestion was met with a look scathing enough to fry chicken. “Try again.” Since he’d already assumed his evening plans had gone up in flames, it didn’t pain him too much to pull the tickets out of his wallet and rip them into little pieces. “No opera, then.” The most expensive confetti on the planet rained down on the carpet as she arched a brow. “You really had tickets to a show?” she asked, sounding a little dazed.
He shrugged, feeling self-conscious all at once for some odd reason. “I wanted to take you on a date. It’s not against the law.” “Okay,” she said. “Okay what?” “You can take me on a date. Just not opera.” Agog, he stared at her. “For real? Like a really real date? Can there be kissing?” “One concession at a time, please.” But there was a glint in her eye that he’d never seen before and suddenly, everything seemed a lot brighter. Probably because he’d just had an aneurism and was even now headed toward the light. “Great, let’s go. You’re dressed perfect for what I have in mind.” She looked decidedly intrigued, so he indulged her. “New plan. Laser tag. But you have to shoot the other guys. Not me.” “Then you might want to ke ep your mouth closed,” she told him with a lofty toss of her hair that pretty much made him want to get started on the kissing portion of the date right then and there. “I’ll drive.” The place he’d chosen for laser tag served pizza, so they split a large while they waited for their group to be called. Carolina could put away food like nobody’s business, which he’d always liked about her. Plus, she didn’t gag when he ordered Canadian bacon and pineapple, which was also a mark in the pro column. But really, he’d fallen in love with her the moment she’d met his gaze at the farmer’s market, when he’d chased down a complete stranger because he didn’t think he could survive another moment without her. Not that he’d ever tell her that. She’d find some way to twist it around and logic the emotion right out of it until even he wasn’t sure if it had really happened. “You gonna eat that?” Carolina gestured at his last slice of pizza with the crust of hers. “Yeah. You had your half. Mitts off mine.” “A gentleman would give up his dinner to a starving lady,” she said with a coquettish flutter of her lashes. “Exc ept you’re not starving. You already ate half a large pizza. And now you want more? Oink.” “I didn’t eat lunch,” she reminded him primly. “Didn’t they teach you anything at that lame university you attended? You don’t win a woman’s heart with pig grunts.” Captivated by the way her eyes sparkled when she forgot to be combative, he shoved his chin into his upturned palm and braced his elbow on the table with mock fascination of the subject. “Tell me the secret then.” “You give her pizza.” She twirled her hand at the slice on his plate, a devilish grin taking up major real estate on her face. “It’s like you’re not even paying attention to a word I say.” “Forgive me, sweetheart. You’re absolutely right. I’m a Neanderthal of the highest order. Mi pizza es su pizza.” When he held it out to her, she took it and then blew him a kiss that he felt all the way down to his toes. What had he done to deserve this one- eighty turnaround? Tonight was almost like the first time they’d
dated, before he’d screwed it all up by proposing to her and then believing that she’d actually said yes because marriage to him worked for her. The buzzer next to Charlie’s elbow went off in a frenzy of flashing lights. “Looks like it’s time for laser tag,” she commented around a mouthful of pizza. “Eat the rest of this while I run to the ladies’ room.” Carolina dashed off in a flurry, leaving him holding her half-eaten pizza. “I didn’t want it that bad,” he said to thin air and dumped it in the trash. He cooled his heels near the entrance to the laser tag arena, gratified to see the people congregating around him were mostly couples instead of kids. Beating the snot out of eight-year-olds always made them cry and he hated that more than he hated losing. Adults he could best all day long. “Oh good,” Carolina said as she sidled up next to him. “No kids. It’s no fun when you have to watch out for them so they don’t get hurt.” Yeah, Carolina was his match in every way. He grinned at her. “Take no prisoners.” “Victory or death.” They knocked knuckles as they suited up for the game. What in the world had possessed him to buy opera tickets? His only excuse was that Carolina had stolen his senses in that farmer’s market the moment she’d acc epted the cactus gift, and he hadn’t regained a shred of his wits since. Normally, the laser tag venues formed two teams out of the players, but Charlie slipped the guy in charge a twenty, murmuring to him that he and Carolina would appreciate being their own third team. Which, of course, the guy allowed. They always did. Once inside, Charlie went on the offensive while Carolina stayed near the reloading station to pick off unsuspecting enemies, their typical strategy. It usually made for a pretty fast start and this time was no exc eption. The carnage was particularly bad for one of their opposing teams, which seemed to be mostly comprised of couples who either hadn’t played before or really didn’t understand that this was war. At the end of the round, Charlie met up with Carolina at the entrance, their score relatively impressive considering they hadn’t played together in quite some time. But they’d beaten the other teams handily, which was the point. “We won,” he told her. Carolina glanced at the scoreboard, her flushed face glowing. “Of course we did. That wasn’t even in question. But our score should have been better. We’re out of practice.” No question, he was a moron. He should have thought of bringing her to play laser tag on the first day. They were a good team, and it was breathtaking how quickly they fell into this kind of solidarity when they were up against others in a competition. It boded well for the rest of the evening. And their marriage as a whole. “I’ll bring you back for our next date.”
“Good plan,” she said. He barely k ept his knees from buckling as she casually agreed to another date without giving him an ounce of grief. “We’re not done with this one yet.” “No, we definitely are not.” And without an ounce of warning, she levered up on her tiptoes and planted a far too quick kiss on his mouth. “Thanks. This was fun.” “You seem to be operating under the impression that was enough of a reward for coming up with this,” he murmured and quick like a cat, snaked an arm around her waist, hauling her back. “Try again.” She settled into his embrace easily as if that had been part of the plan all along. “Maybe you should be thinking about how to reward me. I’m the one who got the majority of those points after all.” “You?” He snorted, his grin so wide his face muscles hurt. “You hid out of sight, barely putting yourself in harm’s way. Me, on the other hand—I’ve got shin splits from all the fast walking I did. Do you have any idea how hard it is to stay out of the line of fire when you can’t run?” “Maybe you should think about a new strategy then,” she suggested with a smug smile. “One where you stay out of the line of fire.” Oh yeah, he was thinking that sounded like a fine idea. He liked not being in Carolina’s sights. Liked being on a team with her instead of against her. “Why don’t we both find a place to hide out of sight?” Before she could figure out if she wanted to protest or not, he backed her into a dim alcove, where they weren’t so visible to the crowd of people congregating for the next round of laser tag. “That’s better.” Tipping her chin up with a well-placed thumb, he picked up that kiss where she’d left off, pouring every bit of himself into it. No holds barred. Because she was the kind of woman who demanded that he do things full- tilt. With a little sound that catapulted his pulse into the stratosphere, Carolina kissed him back, dropping them both into another world where only the two of them existed. This was why he’d never moved on, why he could never move on. She was in his blood, his soul, infusing every molecule of his body with her essence until he couldn’t remember what it felt like to be apart. He murmured her name, taking the kiss de eper until she was clinging to him so hard he thought she’d slide right to the ground if he let go. So he didn’t. And then he realized that his own legs were none too steady. Maybe she was ke eping him off the ground too. “We have to get out of here,” he said between never-ending rounds. “Before I spontaneously combust.” She nodded. “Too many eyes.” Grabbing her hand, he dashed for the door, his shin splints forgotten as he hurried his wife out of the public venue where everything had changed. Hopefully whatever magic they’d found inside wouldn’t vanish the moment they crossed the threshold. But Carolina held his hand all the way home and it was just about the best night of his life. Maybe they’d finally turned a corner. How, he didn’t know. But he’d worry about that later.