“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?”
“Never,” she said with a smile.
He opened the door for her and couldn’t help but let his gaze linger on her legs as she swung them into the car. He went around to the driver’s side, got behind the wheel and started the engine. “Hey Ma” started playing and she looked over at him.
“Wasn’t this the song that was playing at the gala?”
“It was. I know it’s cheesy, but I think of it as our song,” he said.
She smiled over at him. “You’re a closet romantic, Alec.”
“I have my moments,” he admitted.
“You sure do,” she said, as he put the car in gear.
She put her hand on his thigh as he drove through the neighborhood and he started to relax. The nerves that had been dogging him since he’d shown up at her front door were starting to dissipate.
When they got to his house, he escorted her to the front door and then swung it open and stepped back for her to enter. He’d lined the floor with rose petals, something Hadley had promised him looked romantic, and had his housekeeper light candles in Scarlet’s signature scent, which he’d tracked down via her assistant, Billie, who’d been surprisingly helpful.
“Alec... This is so romantic.”
“Well, I wanted this night to be special,” he said. “We’vebeen seeing each other for a while now and I wanted to show you how much you’ve come to mean to me.”
He closed the door behind himself and she turned toward him, putting her hand on his chest and going up on her tiptoes. Their eyes met.
“You mean a lot to me, too.”
Chapter Thirteen
Scarlet had never had a man try to romance her like this, and it touched her. She felt that warm sensation in her stomach that made her wonder if she loved him. Love was the one thing she’d always tried to avoid. She’d loved Tara, of course, but that was it. Tara been the one person she’d been unable to keep herself from caring too much about.
Alec was different. There was no reason to love him. They weren’t related, and they didn’t have any bonds between them other than the child and the ones that they’d created over the last six weeks as they’d gotten to know each other.
She slowly followed the path of roses toward the back of his house and caught her breath when she looked out at his patio and garden. It had been transformed.
He made you an Eden, Tara’s voice whispered through her mind.
The Princess Diarieshad been their favorite movie to watch and she knew immediately what her sister meant. He’d made this ordinary suburban backyard seem otherworldly. And she knew in her heart of hearts that she cared deeply for him. More deeply than she’d ever cared for anyone before.
She almost wished she didn’t. That she could enjoy the fantasy of this and go back to pretending that she was addicted to him because addiction was dangerous and unhealthy. Looking at it that way, it would make sense to want to escape this. But romance... Well, it would make her look silly if she turned and ran away.
If she let the panic rising up inside her have free rein.
“I had my chef prepare dinner for us,” he said, holding out a chair at the table for her.
Dinner. It was just dinner, she thought as she sat down. She could handle this.
He sat next to her and poured her some sparkling water over ice, adding some fresh strawberries the way she liked it. He was the kind of person who noticed details. She liked that about him.
“Your mom stopped by to see me,” she said when they were eating. She’d been unsure of how to bring it up to Alec. He hadn’t mentioned a future together and she’d been trying to keep the baby and them separate. And once she’d met his mom, it had been even harder to think of not being a part of her baby’s life. “I meant to text you earlier but she knows about the baby.”
“Oh, well, I was going to tell my parents soon but wanted to figure out what we were doing first,” he said. “I know they’re going to have a lot of questions that you and I haven’t really been ready to answer.”
She nodded. “Yeah. She said she knew I didn’t have a mom and wanted to get to know me.”
“You can tell her no,” Alec said. “She’s a bit?—”
“Pushy,” Scarlet said. “She told me. But honestly she was so sweet I liked it.”