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  His fingers squeezed. “I admire what you did.”

  “My mother told me no man would ever want to marry me, since I’d had a child and given it away. That men wanted children of their own. I thought she was stupid. I think she meant that it was because I was young,” I said. “But even so, it was a lame thing to say.”

  “It was a mean thing to say, and I’m not surprised you’re angry about it.”

  “Oh, I’m not mad anymore.”

  He squeezed my fingers again. “Oh, yeah?”

  I laughed after a second. “Okay. Yeah. It stings. But…you don’t care, really?”

  Alex pushed his chair back from the table and tugged my hand until I came to sit on his lap. I put my head on his shoulder and toyed with the buttons on his shirt. I’m not small, but with Alex I always felt soft and feminine.

  His hand came to rest just above my knee, and it was warm through the thin washable silk of my trousers. “I love you. Whatever you’ve done before, or whatever you do in the future.”

  I loosened a few buttons on his shirt so I could slip my hand inside. “That sounds like a line from a romance novel.”

  His breath huffed against my hair. “I’ve spent a lot of time in airports and on planes. I’ve read my share of romances.”

  “Why me?” I asked, shamelessly angling for compliments to take away the sour memories of my mother’s words and what had happened in the parking lot after work.

  Alex shifted my weight on his legs. “You ate pot stickers for breakfast.”

  I sat back to look at his face. “That’s not the answer I was expecting.”

  “And because you’re one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” he added. “And because your talent blew me away the first time I saw those photos you took. Because you can almost kick my ass at Dance Dance Revolution, but not quite. But really, it was the pot stickers.”

  I had to laugh at that, for how ridiculous is it that food had led to love? “Why?”

  He shifted again and I got off his lap onto my own chair again. He laughed and swirled another slice of bread through the oil on his plate and handed it to me. “I’ve spent a lot of time around people who think their entire value is tied up in their body mass index. Men who obsess about their workouts to the point they can’t talk about anything but cardio and reps. Women who think emaciation is sexy.”

  I raised a brow. “So in other words, you’re trying to tell me I’m—”

  “Voluptuous,” he interjected. “Pneumatic. Curvy. Gorgeous.”

  I looked down at my breasts and shifted to glance at my thighs. “Uh-huh.”

  “My point is, none of the women—or men—I’ve been with for the past few years would’ve eaten a pot sticker for breakfast.”

  “Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time with the wrong people.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t have a lot of friends, Olivia. Not real friends. But I have a fuck-ton of money, and had nobody to spend it on but myself. It’s easy to get caught up in a lifestyle.”

  I had no problem seeing what he meant. I pushed the platter toward him half an inch. “People who care about brand names, for example?”

  He smiled. “Baby, for the people I was hanging with, Crate and Barrel would be slumming.”

  I thought of the scarf he’d been willing to leave behind and replace with another. “You won’t find too much of that sort of thing here in Annville.”

  He grinned and shook his head. “Tell me about it. I have a serious hard-on for a really good plate of Indian food and a bookstore. Fuck, I think I’d slap an old lady with a fish to have a really good bookstore around here.”

  “Slap an…” I goggled, then giggled.

  It was that way with him; one minute we were talking about the mysteries of life and the next he had me breathless with laughter.

  “Okay, I wouldn’t go that far. But I really would like a bookstore. And fuck me, a Starbucks.”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I didn’t know you liked Starbucks.”

  “I don’t. It’s just that everyone, everywhere, has one.”

  “Not Annville.”

  “Nope. But Annville has you.”

  I groaned, even though I loved that he’d said it. “What romance novel did you pull that from?”

  “Oh, I think it was called Passion in the Cornfield or something.” He winked and twirled another mouthful of pasta. Mouth full, manners put aside for once, he said, “Why me?”

  I’d already been compiling a list. I couldn’t have asked the question, after all, without expecting to give my own answer. “Do I even need to mention that you are a GQMF?”

  He laughed. “The fuck’s a GQMF?”

  “Some motherfucker so goddamn good-looking he could be on the cover of GQ magazine.” I paused to give him an eye. “Which is you.”

  He waved his fork at me. “I’ll take it. Keep going.”

  “I can’t tell you any one thing. There was no one moment. It was just like…you were there when I needed someone, and I figured out that it wasn’t just someone I needed, but you.”

  Alex licked his mouth clean of oil. “Even though I was everything you swore off?”

  “Maybe especially because of that.” I turned my engagement ring from side to side to catch the light. “But you were right when you said you weren’t Patrick. I couldn’t keep thinking every man would be him. I mean, I think I wouldn’t even give straight men a chance.”

  His gaze flickered. “Gotta watch out for those straight men, Olivia.”

  “Yeah. If there is such a thing.”

  “Oh, they’re out there,” Alex said. “Sort of like unicorns, though.”

  “You have to be a virgin to catch one?”

  “I meant horny.” He laughed.

  I’d wondered how to bring up my encounter with Patrick, and this seemed like the best time. “I saw Patrick tonight. He was waiting for me after work. He was angry I hadn’t told him in person that we were getting married.”

  Shields went up on Alex’s expression. Not all the way, as they’d have done once, but enough. “Oh?”

  I laughed to set us both at ease and make this no big deal. “Yeah. He was all up in my face about it, like I owed him something.”

  “Do you think you did?”

  I scowled. “No! Patrick and I have a lot of history, but I don’t owe him a damn thing.”

  Alex said nothing, just nodded. I soaked more oil into my bread but didn’t eat it. I drank the rest of my wine.

  “He and Teddy broke up.”

  Alex shrugged and shoved food around on his plate. “Did he say why?”

  I didn’t want to think about all that entailed. “He says he fucked around, but he and Teddy had an agreement about stuff like that.”

  Alex’s gaze sharpened. “It’s not cheating if you both agree. It is cheating if you don’t.”

  “Yeah, I guess so.” I hesitated. “I never got it, anyway, that arrangement, but it wasn’t my business. I was still surprised.”

  Alex shrugged once more.

  “He…he was pretty upset. He said Teddy told him part of why Patrick was such a mess was because of what had happened with me—”

  Alex’s laugh scoured the air. “He tried to blame you?”

  I didn’t know if the “he” meant Patrick or Teddy. “Don’t worry, I told Patrick he was out of line, that the past was over and that I wasn’t interested in figuring out what had gone wrong.”

  Alex put down his fork very carefully. “He wanted to get back with you? What the fuck is that about?”

  The cold vehemence in his tone set me back a bit. “He was talking out of his ass, Alex. He’s upset. And there’s always been this tie between us. I think he thought I’d be there for him again, the way I always have.”

  “That’s shitty.”

  “It is,” I agreed, and reached to put my hand on his. “But I’m not interested. Even though he offered up a Playgirl fantasy of a nice little threeway—”

  Alex took his hand fro