“It all worked out,” my sister interrupted her. “No need to get into all the details.”
I swallowed, my brain trying to put the pieces together.
I had noticed how Charo had stopped Rosie from saying more but I couldn’t see past what Taco being here meant. Rosie had done this. For me. To make me happy.
I wanted to lay myself at her feet because no one had ever done something so thoughtful for me. Something this personal, something that had been designed to bring only me happiness.
I wanted to pull her into my arms and thank her, worship her, make sure she knew how grateful I was. Fuck. I wanted her. Now more than ever.
Taco barked, snapping me out of those dangerous, dangerous thoughts. Rosie took a tentative step toward Taco, her hand outstretched. “Can I?”
“Of course. He doesn’t bite,” I said. And when she sidled up beside us, I added so only she could hear, “Me, on the other side? I could eat you right up.”
Rosie snorted, as if I’d been joking. I hadn’t been. I’d start at her mouth.
Then, she said very quietly, “I want him to like me.”
“Rosie,” I told her, aware of the group assembled nearby. “Taco will—”
He pounced on Rosie, bringing her down to the ground.
“Love you,” I finished, watching him plant kisses all over her face. Rosie laughed like it was the best thing to ever happen to her. “Taco will love you.”
A pang of the emotion I’d been experiencing earlier tonight was back, and I couldn’t believe it myself, I wouldn’t have if I weren’t feeling it in my gut.
But as I kept my eyes on Taco and Rosie, it was impossible to deny that I was jealous of my dog for being in her arms, free to plant kisses all over her face.
Ah, jealousy. My old friend.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rosie
Something about Lucas was different.
It wasn’t just the button-down shirt and two-piece suit.
And it wasn’t the fact that he had styled his hair in a way that made me itch to slip my fingers through it to check if it was as soft and smooth as it looked.
It was something about the way he smiled, moved, or even breathed around me. The way he’d whispered in my ear how beautiful I looked tonight. Or the way he’d placed his hand at the small of my back when we’d entered Alexia’s restaurant. That intensity I’d felt from him in the past was back, but this time… this time it felt like more. Greater, bigger, like a separate, inescapable force.
It felt like gravity.
I looked around us, taking in every detail about the restaurant, Zarato, and finding myself in awe of the place. I felt as if we were in a bubble, a dream where we weren’t meant to be only friends, or roommates, where the purpose of tonight wasn’t about helping my writing, and where Lucas’s presence in my life didn’t have an expiration date. A dream where we were real, permanent.
I sighed, falling back into reality and feeling the walls of that bubble thin.
But not burst, I told myself. Not yet. Because I still have tonight.
It was the first time I’d ever had dinner at a restaurant like this, so I wanted to make sure to enjoy the experience as much as the company of the amazing man sitting by my side.
The atmosphere was refined but relaxed, and we had been placed at the bar, made of sleek wrought iron in the shape of a horseshoe. The best spot, according to Alexia, who had received us when we’d arrived.
Lucas’s hand grazed the skin between my bare shoulder blades, the touch sending a delicious shiver down my arms and validating my decision to wear a backless dress despite the drop in temperature and the dark heavy clouds hovering above New York today.
“You look happy,” Lucas told me in the deep, stern voice he’d been using all night. “Did you like everything?”
“I am happy.” I smiled at him, and when his eyes jumped down to my mouth his gaze darkened. My next words left me in a choppy, breathless way. “Everything was amazing. Thank you so much for bringing me here.”
“I wouldn’t want anyone else with me tonight, Rosie.”
My heart jumped at his words, hungry for more. And even if it was the stupidest thing to say, I found myself needing to make light of the situation: “Not even Taco?”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head, as if I’d said something serious. And then he leaned down his head, closing the distance between our faces until our noses almost brushed. “You’re the only one I want here with me, sharing food with me, and sitting so close I’m having a hard time keeping my hands to myself.”