* * * * *

Cher

I sat in Merry’s truck, the best steak I’d ever eaten settled warm in my stomach with the rest of the best food I’d ever eaten, not to mention three glasses of champagne.

And we were on our way to his place after the best date I’d ever had, bar none.

With the shit out of the way on the road to the restaurant, the rest was just Merry and me the way we’d always been.

Except super-charged.

We talked. We laughed. He teased. I teased.

But the added element of us being a new kind of us, a different kind of together, a together that involved sex, having had it and going to get it, made the teasing amazing.

It was like two hours of the best foreplay imaginable, having it over good food, nice champagne, in a crazy-awesome restaurant, wearing fancy clothes with other people around, and yet it was just me with a handsome guy.

The last good one standing.

Having it, I felt lucky.

Not like the lucky I felt when I’d met Dennis Lowe, who was pretending to be Alec Colton, insidiously slithering into my life in order to shake it to its foundations.

A genuine lucky where the goodness was right there, not just within reach because, most of the meal when we weren’t eating, Merry held my hand.

So I had a hold on it.

And it had a hold on me.

And all I had to do was not fuck things up and not let go.

“Nicest place I’ve ever been,” I murmured into the cab.

“What, Cherie?”

I turned my head and looked at him.

God.

Could that be mine?

“Never been to a place as nice as that,” I told him louder.

He glanced at me before looking back to the road. “Never?”

“Nope.”

In the dashboard light, I saw his jaw weirdly go tight before he released it.

“Hand, sweetheart,” he ordered, taking his from the wheel and holding it palm up between us.

I put mine in his.

His fingers curled around and he rested our hands on his thigh.

Yeah, I had a hold on it.

I just had to work not to fuck it up and never let go.

“Gotta catch up,” he muttered.

“Catch up?” I asked.

“Givin’ you the things you deserve that you already shoulda had.”

Fuck, but I loved that he thought that about me.

I let that settle deep inside as I looked forward. “Need to take Ethan there. Maybe when he turns thirteen. Show him what life could be like if you’re smart and work for it.”

I was aiming for thirteen because I’d seen the prices on the menu, though it may take until Ethan was fifteen before I could afford it.

And I was still having difficulty processing the fact that Merry had blown that kind of cake on me.

“You’re a good mom.”

I loved that he thought that about me too.