choice she could’ve made. He had been willing to take their romance slow, but she’d cranked up the dial on the intensity when she’d set her time limit.
He leaned in to her, pinning her with his intense gaze. “You’ve given us thirty days to fall in love, Amelia. Do you really think I’m going to let a single day go by without seeing you? Touching you? Hearing the melodic sound of your voice?”
Her gaze dropped to the pavement to avoid his eyes, her teeth nervously chewing at her bottom lip. “I understand that,” she argued, “but I have a job to do. So do you. You know I pretty much spend Thursday, Friday and Saturday in a kitchen. I can’t run off on a date with you every night.”
He understood that. They both had responsibilities. He just wasn’t going to let her use them as an excuse. She’d agreed to a test run of their relationship, but he knew this would be a battle to the finish. She wouldn’t give in easily, and neither would he. “That’s fine. That’s why we’ll spend our nights together at our new place. And during the day, I may very well be by your side, too.”
“What?” Her nose wrinkled in confusion. “In the kitchen with me? At work?”
Tyler nodded. “Whenever I can, I’m going to be where you are, Amelia. If you’re baking a cake, I’m going to be washing the pans. If you’re dicing vegetables, I’ll be peeling carrots and taking out the trash. You insisted I be present, not zipping around the world, so for the next thirty days, I’m your shadow. You only get a reprieve today while I make all the necessary arrangements.”
Her mouth dropped open and her auburn eyebrows knit together, but she didn’t say anything. She hadn’t thought this through, and the consequences would come back to haunt her. She’d be begging him to take a business trip before too long.
“Don’t you have a job to do? Aren’t there precious gems to be sold? Diamonds to be cut?”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “I have plenty of work, I assure you. But I have a flexible schedule and employees that can handle some things. I can conduct business where and when I want to. That’s the beauty of what I do. Right now, I’m more interested in focusing all my attention on you. So again,” he pressed, “dinner tomorrow night?”
Amelia drew her mouth closed and nodded. “Okay. About seven?”
Seven was perfect. That was his lucky number—an omen of his success on the horizon. He pressed a soft kiss to her lips and stepped back to give her some room. “It’s a date.”
“She’s ba-a-a-ck!”
Amelia winced the moment she crossed the threshold into the lobby and heard Gretchen announce her arrival. She’d been hoping they would have clients in this morning. If someone was booking a wedding with Natalie or taking a tour, her friends couldn’t fuss over her. No such luck.
Bree and Gretchen spilled into the hallway. Natalie popped her head out of her office, her headset on. She held up a finger to wait and then continued her phone conversation.
Amelia went on into her office so she could hang up her coat and stow her purse away. She grabbed her tablet in the hopes they would talk about what she’d missed at the staff meeting, but she knew the conversation would be about anything but work.
She carried her half-empty bottle of water with her to the conference room. By the time she got there, her three partners at From This Moment were assembled there, waiting, although not patiently. Bree looked as if she was about to burst with excitement. Gretchen had wicked glee lighting her eyes. Natalie seemed concerned, as she was prone to be. She was suspicious about love in general, and marriage was a bridge too far in her opinion. At the moment, Natalie was probably the smarter of the two of them.
Amelia sat down in one of the chairs. “So what did I miss this morning?”
“Please.” Bree groaned. “You are going to tell us everything that’s going on with you and that guy, right now!”
“Yes, and start from the beginning,” Natalie said, “since I missed the discussion this morning.”
With a heavy sigh, Amelia repeated the tale about the high school reunion gone awry. She went into as much detail as she could, hoping she wouldn’t have to repeat the story again. She left out the part about it being the most incredible sex of her life and tried to focus on how she ended up married to her best friend while on vacation.
“So,” Natalie began with a furrowed brow, “did he just come to town so you can start the divorce proceedings?”
“Pretty much, although I’m not sure we’re going to do that just yet.”
Bree’s eyebrows shot up. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” Amelia began, “that we’re going to date for a month and see where it goes. It’s a lot easier to get married than it is to get divorced, so we’re going to put more thought into the latter than we did into the former.”
“You’re going to date your husband? This is all just so wrong,” Natalie said with a slow shake of her head.
“Is he moving here? Doesn’t he live in New York or something?”
“Yes, his company is based out of Manhattan. He has more flexibility with his work than I do, so he’s going to rent a place here for a month.” Amelia hoped they didn’t ask what they would do after that, because she honestly didn’t know. Could Tyler stay in Nashville long-term? She couldn’t leave. Amelia was From This Moment’s caterer. A wedding without food was...a tacky Vegas elopement. She sighed.
As it was, they would have to figure out what they would do while she was on maternity leave. They would cross that bridge when they got there, she supposed. She hadn’t even dropped that bomb on her friends yet.
“You and Tyler never dated before, did you?”
Amelia took a sip of her water and shook her head. “No. We’ve only ever been friends. You know how I am with men. If we’d dated, we would’ve broken up by now. It was always more important to have him in my life than to act on some physical impulse.”
“Natalie said he was hot. Like, Chris Pine hot. How could you go all those years without so much as kissing him?” Gretchen asked.
The simplest answer was that she just hadn’t allowed her mind to go there. Yes, he was handsome. All the things they’d talked about in the coffee shop earlier were correct. He had a lot of the attributes she valued in a prospective partner. But in the end, he was just Tyler. That canceled out a lot. “We did kiss once, in tenth grade. This stupid girl dared us at a party in front of everyone.”
“And?”
“And—” she shrugged “—it was awkward. I only have a sister, but I thought that might be what it was like to kiss your own brother. Zero chemistry. A very uncomfortable experience. After that, it was easier to keep things platonic.”
“Tell me it was better the second time around,” Gretchen groaned.
“It was. A million times better.” Amelia should’ve taken into consideration that their first kiss
