He nodded happily. “I gave you a painting,” he echoed.

“But it’s not just any painting. It’s The Big Love.”

“That’s what you’ve given me,” he said softly, reverently, and she melted from head to toe, her skin sizzling, her heart igniting, her body shouting and cheering with a gleeful kind of abandon.

“I have a gift for you too, but it might seem kind of tiny now.”

“Size doesn’t matter,” he said, and her eyes drifted to his pants.

“I beg to differ. Your size does matter, and it’s just the size I want.”

“Well, that size matters. Obviously.”

“Stay here,” she said, and walked to the kitchen, grabbed her box of fortune cookies, and brought them to Nate.

“Aren’t we supposed to have these after dinner?”

She gestured for him to move it along. “Dessert comes first.”

He opened the box, and found the two fortune cookies that she’d special ordered. “They’re just fortune cookies,” she said, suddenly feeling like her gift was tiny. She hadn’t known that he was bringing her a work of art tonight. She’d simply intended to give him a sweet little something. That was all. “But I had them specially made. Open them.”

“Both?”

“Yes.”

He took out the first one, cracked it open, and removed the strip of paper. “Now is the time to try something new,” he said, reading off the fortune. He looked at her, crinkled his brow, then snapped a finger. “That was your fortune the night we had Chinese. After I blindfolded you.”

“Among other things,” she said, gesturing to her breasts.

He smiled widely. “I’ll happily do that again. And if memory serves, you wanted to give me a tattoo right here,” he said, tapping his fingers to his chest.

“I did, and I still do. And if you open the other one too you’ll find out what it would say if I inked you.”

He snapped open the second cookie, letting the next fortune fall out. “Your fondest dreams will come true this year,” he said, reading out loud. He set down the cookies on the coffee table, and she wrapped her arms around his firm waist and tipped her chin up to look at him.

“Remember how you thought our fortunes were mixed up? You had the fortune ‘now is the time to try something new,’ but you said it was mine?”

“I remember.”

“But I don’t actually think they were mixed up after all. I think the right fortune went to the right person. You did learn something new. You learned to trust again. With me,” she said, and a flurry of pride and joy spread through her chest that she had been the one who could show him that love and commitment didn’t have to turn sour.

He brushed the back of his fingertips against her cheek. “I did learn that. You showed me that.”

“And my fortune was that my fondest dream will come true,” she said, leaning into his hand, to the tenderness of his touch.