“You’re going to move here. We’re going to have tons of sex. And then what?” Zoe asked. “How does that breakup work out? My family will be heartbroken. No other guy in this town will want to date me.”
“Well, excellent on the second part,” he said firmly. “As for the first—there’s no breakup. Nothing to worry about.”
“We’re never going to break up?” she asked, her eyebrows nearly to her hairline.
“Right.”
“You’re crazy.”
“Why? This makes total sense.”
“It makes no sense. You can’t just kiss someone, push them away, then come back five months later and essentially propose!”
He was getting a little irritated with her insistence against this. “Looks like I can.”
She huffed out a breath while rolling her eyes. “Well, I’m not going to marry my brother’s best friend. A guy I’ve known forever.”
“Why not?”
Zoe propped her hands on her hips. “My entire life goes according to plan too, Aiden. But not just everything I touch turns to gold like you. I make it happen that way. But I live in the same town I’ve been in all my life. I took over my family’s business. I moved into a house of a lifelong family friend. The people I work with and wait on are people I’ve known forever. The things I do at work go according to specific recipes that have been tried and true for half a century. There are very few surprises or bumps or glitches.”
“And you love it that way,” he pointed out.
She nodded. “Which is why I think having some surprises, excitement, adventures in my love life… and my sex life… would be great.”
He lifted a brow. “Really?”
She tipped her head. “Yes. Really. Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged.
“Hey.”
“You haven’t even deviated from a recipe by a half a teaspoon in all your life,” he told her with a little laugh.
“We’re making cake pops now!” she said, gesturing toward the worktable.
“And I’ll bet you one million dollars that it was all Josie’s idea that the cake and icing and everything you’re using is the same stuff you’ve always used, so that those things taste exactly like all the other Buttered Up cakes—which is a fantastic thing, by the way—and that even having those little balls of cake added to your menu makes you a little itchy.”
She chewed on her bottom lip.
“Deny it,” he challenged. “Any of it. You make those balls out of the same cake batter you do everything else, don’t you?”
“No.” She paused. Then she admitted, “We use the leftover cake Josie trims off the custom cakes she makes. And leftover icing.”
“Ah-ha!” He knew this woman. She needed to realize that.
“It’s a great way to reduce waste,” she said.
“It is,” he agreed. “And a great way to not really change anything.”
She scratched her arm. “Even more reason to want an exciting sex life.”
“The exciting, spontaneous sex life you wanted so badly but felt you needed to try out before doing it ‘for real’?” He even made the air quotes with his fingers because he did not take seriously that sex between them wouldn’t have been very real.
”Shut up,” she muttered.
Aiden grinned. Zoe had never been good at admitting she was wrong or giving up a fight. Definitely something she’d inherited from her grandmother.
“Hey, no worries,” he said. “That is not going to be a problem. I’m all for an exciting sex life. Whatever you want.” His body stirred with the very idea of exploring anything and everything Zoe would want to try.
“Not. With. You.”
She was so damned stubborn. “Zoe,” he said, dropping his voice.
But she just narrowed her eyes. “Marrying a guy who’s basically been a part of my family my entire life, who I know as well as I know my brother, who I already have years of memories with, isn’t new or exciting.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he finally said. “Knowing me, liking me, your family already loving me, having a history together—that’s all counting against me here?”
She shrugged. “Yes.”
“That is nuts,” he told her.
“Actually, the idea of marrying the first guy I ever sleep with is so sane and normal and”—she wrinkled her nose—“cliché, it’s ridiculous.”
He straightened. “So the sex thing is still on the table though,” he said, focusing on the part that would help him out most. Because the rest of it… well, she wasn’t wrong. Falling for the first guy she slept with was absolutely a possibility, and Zoe was a forever kind of girl. Finding out she’d seriously dated and been intimate with only one guy would not have shocked him.
And now that the guy was going to be him, it made perfect sense.
Was he above taking her to bed and then pressing hard for more? Nope. Not at all. Zoe McCaffery was difficult. He wasn’t sure why he’d thought she’d suddenly be easy for him. Oh yeah, the candy-pink teddy she’d worn into his bedroom on Christmas Eve. That whole thing had seemed very easy.
Forgetting about it had been the hard part.
