“You could get a hook.”

A laugh bursts from my throat. “I’m not getting a fucking hook tattoo.”

She falls quiet with a little smile pulling her lips up into a kissable curve. I bend, kissing it.

“You make me happy,” she says.

Fuck. This girl. “You make me happy, too.”

She straightens, eyes narrowing. “There will literally not be one other girl kissing you on this show or otherwise. Dates? Okay. But they have to be hilariously miserable to make good television and then you sneak out and come see me and put bite marks all over my thighs.”

I blink, nearly choking on a peanut.

“Harlow, I told you I didn’t sign that clause. I’m not dating other women on the show.” I kiss her again. I’m hungry for it now, for the silk of her thighs on my teeth, for the way my teeth marks would look on that soft, delicate skin. Pulling back, I blink away, down the bar to clear my head.

“Won’t you have to?”

“I think they’re happy to have us signed on. I don’t think Matt or Giles is going to push for me to stay single, actually. I think they’re focusing the business story on me, and the romance angle on Colt and Levi.”

“Well, yeah, look at them.”

I growl. “Harlow.”

She smiles, licking her lips. “You mean we don’t have to be sneaky?”

Shaking my head, I ask, “Am I crazy to do this? I’m going to be a D-list celebrity auditioning for Survivor when I’m forty.”

“Oh, come on, that’s next year. Isn’t it a two-year contract?”

“Ha.”

“At least you’ll have a hot wife.”

“Wife?” My heart takes off, too fast. She reads my deepest thoughts, the ones that want to be settled, spoken for, sharing a bed and a home and a life.

“Yeah.”

“You’ve already been my wife, remember?” Despite everything that happened in Vegas, there’s very little I take more seriously than family. I step off my bar stool and she pulls me between her bent legs. “So you’re actually proposing this time?”

“Just predicting.” She leans her chin on my chest to look up at me. “I want kids.”

Kissing the tip of her nose, I tell her, “I’m okay with that. But not for a little while yet.”

“Three,” she says.

I shake my head. “Two.”

“Then they have to be the best two possible, so we should practice.”

“Nightly.”

“And daily.”

I nod. “Vegas again?”

She lifts my arm, checks my watch. “I don’t have anywhere to be until tomorrow at ten.”

“I don’t even have to work tomorrow,” I tell her.

Harlow slaps a twenty down on the bar. “Then shit, Sunshine, we’d better hit the road.”

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments