She opened one eye, and then the other.
She smiled sleepily and stretched her arms up over her head like a wanton, letting the sheet slip down.
His head went light. Boy, that viewnevergot old. “Just how I like my women. Sunny side up.”
She rolled over and pressed all that warm nude lusciousness up against him. “Mmm. That’s funny. I like my men over easy.”
“Oh, what a pity. I’m afraid the only thing on the menu this morning is over hard,” he said with great, solicitous regret.
They were shamelessly dorky.
Her hand slipped down under the sheets to investigate the veracity of this.
He sucked in a breath as her hand languidly stroked.
“I might be open to substitutions,” she decided musingly as he stirred, and swelled, beneath her clever fingers that now knew him so well and yet found ways to surprise him.
She burrowed her face in his throat. “Yousmellbetter than toast.”
“Yes, but how do Itaste?” he said gravely.
She kissed him. Slow, slow. The sheer decadence of being leisurely was still erotic as hell. And she kept up the handiwork under the covers so that mad hunger took over both of them, and it was an effort to pace themselves.
Annelise had spent the night at Caitlynn Pennington’s house, and they were picking her up at ten.
They could do this for the next two hours.
So that’s exactly what they did.
At about nine forty-five they were just about to head to the door to pick up Annelise at Caitlynn Pennington’s when Eden laughed and touched his arm. “Gabe, look...”
She pointed to the whiteboard.
Which was crowded with even more doodles and abbreviations than before. Funny thing, though: somehow life itself seemed infinitely roomier. Love somehow expanded the depth and breadth of every day.
But in a square three weeks from the square representing today, heretofore occupied only by a little drawing of a wedding bell, were pink words in Annelise’s handwriting.
Mr. Caldera is my dad!!!!
With an arrow stretching on into infinity, through all the squares.
He’d be Mr. Caldera at school. Right now, he was “Gabe” at home.
He’d be “Dad” forever after that.
This they’d all decided, after a confab, and because Annelise had a sense of ceremony, his new title would go into effect right after they both said “I do” and not sooner.
After which the whole Harwood household, whiteboard, Peace and Love and the Barbies and Annelise’s guitar, everything, would move into Gabe’s big yellow house with the tire swing and room for a horse.
One square per week on the whiteboard featured a sketch that was basically a little circle with a smile and a snarl of hair on top.
That was their symbol for Jasper.
Annelise Skyped with him once a week since he’d left, for a half hour or an hour or so, whatever the two of them could spare, and Jasper had been surprisingly diligent about it. Eden always hovered nearby. Or Gabe. Their relationship had settled into a sort of goofy rhythm. Jasper was a lot like a big kid, and he liked to show her stuff on the guitar, and the songs she wrote seemed to just slay him. He genuinely got a kick out of Annelise, naturally, because Annelise was awesome.
Word that Jasper Townes had a daughter still hadn’t reached any gossip sites.
And it was fine. Good, even. Eden genuinely hoped they grew to love each other in the safety of a quiet relationship. More love in the world was better than less.