“The wedding is in Beaverdale?” I kicked at some more pebbles. “But what about the publicity? I thought the whole point of our fake wedding was to have people see us get married?”
“Do you remember the photographer from our Vanity Fair shoot? She’s got the exclusive. The pictures are already sold to People. Seven pages, I believe.”
I stopped walking and hunched over. My mouth filled with watery saliva. I moaned, “This is happening.”
He rubbed my back. “Just breathe.”
“I’m getting married in seven days.”
“Aren’t you excited about your pretty dress? We’ll have to schedule a fitting for Shayla for her bridesmaid dress. You did ask her, I assume?”
With my hands on my knees, I continued to stare at my blue sneakers in the dirt. “I don’t think I asked her. I’m a terrible person. I was only thinking about me.”
He kept rubbing my back, his hand a soothing presence.
“I knew you didn’t have a handle on all this,” he said, chuckling. “That’s why I’ve got someone coming into Beaverdale next week to help you.”
“You hired me an assistant?”
“Something like that.”
I cleared my throat and straightened up. The nausea had passed, and now I felt eerily calm. The sky around us glowed pink and orange, the sun nearing the horizon, and a beautiful blue lake lay ahead of us on the path.
I looked right into Dalton’s mischievous green eyes, and he stared back at me as if I was the most fascinating person he’d ever met.
How did he do that?
How did he turn any moment—even one with me threatening to vomit—into something beautiful and romantic? It wasn’t just his beautiful eyes and perfect face, scruffy with dark stubble. It was something else.
An acting term popped into my head: commitment. With everything Dalton did, he committed, utterly and completely. Why couldn’t I do that? Why was I always running away?
He swept some loose hair from my face and behind my ear, bringing me into his stillness, his calm. “Aren’t you curious about your assistant?”
I saw something in his eyes—the way they looked bemused.
“Mitchell,” I said.
His eyebrows rose with surprise, and he was speechless for a few seconds.
“So much for me keeping secrets from you,” he said, grinning.
“Lucky guess.” I smiled back, and then my smile travelled all through my body, getting more powerful, until I was jumping up and down giddily. “Mitchell is coming! I get to see Mitchell!”
“He’s booked at the Nut Hill Motel. I figured he can still bunk on the couch at your house if you want, but this way you still have some space, and Shayla won’t feel like she’s getting pushed out.”
I squealed. “Mitchell and Shayla are going to meet!”
Dalton frowned. “You didn’t get this excited to see me today.”
“I was trying to figure out why and how you f**ked a dozen red roses.”
He chuckled. “What? That wasn’t romantic? With the petals on the floor?”
“Was it supposed to be romantic?”
He took my hand and tugged for me to keep walking down the trail toward the lake.
He said, “The roses were very romantic. I know a thing or two about romance. And now we’re going to the lake, for a paddle around in the canoe.”
“Oh, f**k, no. Canoe? Have you not noticed how top heavy I am? Not to mention how bottom heavy?”
“C’mon, it’ll be fun.”
I laughed. “C’mon, It’ll be fun? That’s exactly what someone says right before absolute disaster.”
He stopped walking and kissed me, his chin prickly against my chin. I melted in his arms. Man, he was a good kisser. It was a shame he was so amazing at sex, because we didn’t spend enough time on kissing, just like this.
He pulled away, and I actually swooned, wavering back and forth like I might fall down and tumble the rest of the way to the lake. The sky around us was electric pink.
“Something happens every time I kiss you,” he said.
“Absolute disaster?”
“I fall deeper.”
I blinked, holding my breath. Deeper? Deeper in love? C’mon, say it.
He kissed my lips, the tip of my nose, and then my forehead, lingering. “Let’s find that canoe before the sun disappears completely.”
“We can’t go boating in the dark. We’ll get lost.”
He pulled me down the hill. “At least we’ll be lost together.”
I trotted to catch my feet up to my body.
This canoe expedition seemed like a spectacularly bad idea, even before it began. But Dalton wanted to go, and I didn’t want to say no. As you may have noticed by now, I had a difficult time saying no to the man.
We located the canoe in a wooden shed, not far from the dock. The resort had posted a number of rules for guests using the boats, including a rule about signing in at the front desk and getting the key to unlock the padlock chaining the canoe to the wooden shelf.
Dalton didn’t like the idea of asking permission—no, sir, not one bit. He grabbed a hammer from the nearby tool wall and whacked the padlock three times.
“You’re such a f**king delinquent,” I said.
The padlock hadn’t released yet. He shot me a devious grin, looking like his vampire alter ego in the dim shed. “You get so wet for me when I’m bad.”
“No,” I lied.
“I’d stick my fingers in your panties right now, but I don’t have time to prove a point. Grab your end of that canoe and let’s get out on the lake.”
Grumbling, I grabbed the end of the canoe, which was shockingly light. How was this puny boat supposed to hold two people?
“As for your wet little panties,” he said, “I’ll check those once we’re out on the water.”
“No way.” We started walking the canoe down to the water, and I had to laugh at Dalton, because he’d obviously never canoed before. I explained to him the portage technique, with the canoe held upside down over our heads.
We clumsily got the canoe and the oars down to the water’s edge, and he was still obsessing over my panties.
He said, “You’re already in a skirt. Take your panties off and bunch them up in my pocket to make things easier.”
“Maybe I should go back to the resort and let you go for a canoe paddle by yourself. You can paddle your canoe all by your lonesome. Paddle away, my friend.”