Lace was nodding, but still looking unsure of herself.
Vince needed to add more clarity.
“Which part of what I said are you having trouble with?”
“The attractive thing,” she muttered, before she squared her shoulders and her voice grew stronger.
“Look at me, Vince. I’m hollowed out. My brain is more often than not in a fog. I have no hair. I’ll probably lose my eyebrows,”she said on a bitten back sob, “and I won’t haveat leastone of my breasts for very much longer. How can you possibly think I’m appealing?”
Vincent knew he needed to bring out just the right words to convince her of her worth, so he didn’t hold back.
“I know all that, but it doesn’t seem to make a difference in how I feel. Do you know how much I’ve wanted to kiss you, almost from the first minute I bumped into you in the hospital hallway?”
Lace drew in a short gasp as he kept going.
“Do you know that there hasn’t been a moment over the last week when I didn’t think of you, and that I was counting the minutes until I could see you again?”
She looked shocked.
“Lace,” he assured her slowly, “I find you stunning. I really do. Hair or no hair. Breasts or no breasts. Besides,” he added almost impishly, “I’m really an avid ass man.”
Vince wasalmostamazed that all of what he’d presented to Lace was true, but a huge smile lit his face as he fully embraced the veracity of his declaration.
He sucked in a breath, then went for broke. “But more than that, and way more than appearances, I alreadylikewho you are.”
She blinked. Twice.
“You want to…kiss me?” she asked huskily, staring at his lips, which of course made his cock twitch.
Vincent grinned harder. “Out of all the things I said,that’swhat you came away with?”
She gave him a tentative smirk. “Well, Imighthave been thinking along the same lines.” she admitted.
Yes!
That cemented it. When they got to her house, first things first, he was going to look the place over carefully to see if Lace’sidea had merit.Thenhe was going to kiss the ever-loving stuffing out of her.
Yup. Time to go.
Vince picked up their napkins, crushed them into a ball, and sent a two-pointer into the nearest trash can.
“Score,” he crowed, then turned to her. “Imagine if I’d missed?”
“Not a chance,” she told him breathlessly. “I have a feeling youalwaysscore when you want to.”
Vince inhaled sharply, swallowing his spit the wrong way, which started a coughing fit that had everyone at the surrounding tables eyeballing him to see if he was okay.
He gave an airy wave of his hand to signal he wasn’t about to expire, but it took a minute before he was able to regain his equilibrium.
Bythattime, he knew his face was probably beet red.
Vince finally found his voice and was able to address Lace again.
“Does…does that mean we can…explore that kiss we’ve both been thinking about, sooner, rather than later?” he asked, almost not recognizing this unsure side of himself.
Since when did Vincent have any kind of problem with pre-seduction moves?
Uh, never?