“Lorrie, stop crying,” Linda said. “You’re making your face all red and splotchy. Eat your ice cream.”
“There’s hot fudge to put on it, just use the dipper,” Marie added. She’d put a big pot filled with hot fudge in the middle of the table along with a bowl of chopped walnuts and two bowls of fresh whipped cream.
Amaryllis didn’t hesitate. She scooped up hot fudge with the dipper three times. “I don’t know what’s wrong with the rest of you, but I’m not taking a chance she takes this away from us.”
“Put like that,” Lexie said and poured fudge over her ice cream and then passed the dipper to Stefani. “I love your accent. Where are you from?”
“Finland,” Stefani said readily. “I am here for the peace convention, to represent my country. I’m meeting the others for the first time in person. We’ve worked hard to put this convention together. None of us had any idea that it would be so large we would have to have a place like the San Diego Convention Center.”
“We’re working the convention as volunteers,” Lexie said proudly, forgetting just a few hours earlier she wasn’t all that excited to do so.
“It’s such a good thing,” Craig said. “That’s why I came. I’m attending it with a few friends I met online. I’m actually speaking on one of the panels.”
“Really? Which one?” Stefani asked.
“My friends and I thought up a couple of cool ideas for games to promote a peaceful solution at the end of the day to make things work between people that don’t believe the same ways.” Enthusiasm edged into his voice. “They’re the kind of games we like, very action packed and with lots of shooting, but at the end of the game, only the peaceful solutions the teams think of will help.”
Malichai thought maybe the game sounded a little conflicted, but he hadn’t heard the full presentation and it was an ideas convention, so any ideas were welcome. They would be thrown out to those attending to expand on and hopefully improve on. In any case, Craig had come out of his shell and interacted with those at the B and B in order to go to the convention.
“That sounds so cool, Craig,” Lexie said, looking up at him and batting her lashes. “Do you want some of the hot fudge for your ice cream?”
He nodded and she scooped the dipper into the melted fudge and then poured it into his bowl. She smiled full-on at him. “Tell me when.”
Craig looked as if he might faint at her attention. “That’s perfect, Lexie.” He hesitated before he said her name, half expecting her to protest.
Malichai smiled at Amaryllis and reached under the table for her hand. He pressed her palm to his thigh, his thumb sliding over the back of her hand. “I’ll help clean up tonight. I have a surprise for you.”
“I can clean up,” Marie stated firmly. “You go have fun.”
Malichai shook his head. “We wouldn’t be able to have fun knowing we left you with the cleanup. It will go fast with the three of us doing it together.”
“That sounds so dirty,” Burnell said, winking at Jay. “The three of you doing it together.”
“We got it,” Malichai said, trying not to laugh.
Amaryllis and Marie exchanged a long look. Both were also attempting to keep a straight face.
Malichai gave them a fierce look. In an overloud whisper, he reprimanded them. “No laughing. That will only encourage him.”
10
The stars were out in full force, so much so that the sky, in places, looked almost milky. Malichai stretched out on the thick futon mattress he’d gotten from Marie earlier. He had two pillows and a blanket, just in case his woman got cold. More likely she would have cold feet now that she’d had time to think about the things he’d told her. She had to know he was going to ask her to marry him. Well, not ask. He was already her fiancé.
He found himself smiling as he gazed at the stars. Amaryllis turned over onto her stomach, propping herself up on her elbows so she could look down at his face. “You’re smirking.”
“It’s a smile, not a smirk.” He might be smirking. He was already her fiancé and didn’t have to actually ask her the big question. That was definitely worth a smirk.
“It’s a smirk. But the futon mattress is wonderful, so I’m letting the smirk go. Tell me what happened after I left this morning. It was really difficult to leave, by the way. If I’m ever in trouble for anything, that’s a pass right there.”
He scowled at her. “You can’t negotiate that on the fly. That’s an entire discussion.”
“No, I think it’s one of those things that just makes sense. If I do something really difficult that I don’t want to do, I should get a pass the next time I screw up.”
“Does it work both ways?”
“That would depend.”
“Depend?” He turned toward her, one arm curling around her waist and dragging her body in close to his. Tightly. She felt warm and soft and all his. “What does that mean?”
“You can’t say you don’t like taking out the garbage, but if you do it, you get a pass.”
“I don’t like taking out the garbage. At. All. It smells, and the women are all about saving the damn environment, and that means sorting crap. So yeah, I take that out, I get a pass.”
She started laughing. He was watching her face carefully and he saw it first in the curve of her lower lip, and then her lips parted, and the smile climbed to her eyes, lighting them a deep blue. Her face lit up and she was laughing, throwing her head back, uncaring about anything else but the two of them and their ridiculous conversation.
He shifted his weight, curled his hand around the nape of her neck and brought her head down to his. The moment his mouth made contact with hers his world transformed. Fire licked at his skin. Electricity danced through his veins. Heat rushed to his groin, settled there and grew into a firestorm that fast. He pulled her tighter against him, his mouth commanding hers.
The hand at her waist slid up her back, finding bare skin beneath her top. The night was warm and as usual, she wore a tank top and the yoga pants she preferred for comfort at the end of a long day. He used the pads of his fingers to stroke long caresses over her skin while he devoured her. The more he kissed her, the more he was addicted to her taste. To her fire. He wanted more. He even needed it.
Reluctantly, he let her raise her head, both needing more air than he could give them. He kept his palm curled around her nape, his eyes looking into hers. Drowning there in her. “Baby, you know you’re not getting away from me tonight.”
“I’m not?”
That little twinge of amusement was back in her voice, and those eyes of hers were lit like twin sapphires.
“You’re not.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and reached with his other hand to find the little jeweler’s box beneath the futon mattress. “Got this for you.” He didn’t know how other men did this sort of thing, but she might as well know he was awkward when it came to expressing himself when it counted. He might think poetry, but he wasn’t about to say it out loud.
She looked at the box as if it might bite her.
“It’s not a snake, babe.”