She hadn’t meant to call John her boyfriend. They hadn’t quite discussed it yet, what they were to one another. Did John even have girlfriends? The word sounded so juvenile. Fun, exhilarating, but juvenile. She was positive they were monogamous simply due to the amount of sex they were having. The man would have to be addicted to sex, Red Bull and Viagra if he were going to somehow be having more sex with someone else on the side.

His brows pulled down in that V that she’d come to love so dearly, and his lips twitched in a smile so slight, a stranger wouldn’t notice it. But Mary did. “I was just thinking the same thing,” he said in his two-toned voice.

“You were just thinking how lucky I am?” she asked innocently, widening her smile and batting her eyelashes. “How sweet.”

He laughed. “I was thinking how lucky I am.” John slipped his hand across the counter and grabbed hers, doing that palm-kissing thing he always did with her. The man had a serious thing for her palms. “Remember that day Estrella and I came to your shop?”

“When she dragged you in by your ear?”

“I came willingly!” he insisted. “I told you that I knew I needed to apologize. And apologize I did.”

Mary squeezed his hand. “It was actually a very good apology, by the way.” She cocked her head to one side. “That apology was the first thing I truly liked about you. Not every person can apologize and mean it the way you did.”

“I already liked everything about you,” John admitted, those light eyes eating up her entire expression. “I felt like such an ass for what I’d said on our date, and then I felt like an ass for witnessing you ask that guy out when you obviously wanted to do it privately. Remember that guy? James.”

She laughed in surprise as a look of disdain crossed John’s face. “You remember his name?”

The tips of John’s ears went pink, but he shrugged. “It was a memorable moment. And he stuck in my head because I couldn’t for the life of me believe that anyone in their right mind would reject you, for any reason. Married or not.”

Mary laughed again. “John, you’d rejected me not two days before that!”

He shook his head adamantly. “I stupidly pushed you away, but I certainly didn’t reject you.” He kissed her palm again. “The point is, I was jealous of that guy, flirting with you so easily. And he didn’t have his mother there with him.” John shook his head with a little laugh, looking down at their laced fingers and then back into Mary’s face. “I wanted to be that guy.”