He grabbed my left hand and took my ring finger between his finger and thumb. “Still wearing a fake wedding ring, I see.”
I pursed my lips. I’d forgotten I was wearing that. I had gotten into a habit of removing it when I got home from work, but I hadn’t done it today because of Kai’s birthday.
“I forgot to take it off,” I said, muscling in under the water to rinse my hair.
He stepped back and grabbed my soap, using it to wash both his body and his hair. “Don’t bother. I bought it because it suited you.”
“You bought it? You said it was a family ring.”
He shoved his head under the water, unperturbed that I was put out. “Yeah, well, I couldn’t tell you I’d bought it, could I?”
“Why not?”
“Because I knew you’d freak out about it.”
“Yeah, you can’t take it back now!” I rinsed the last of the shampoo from my hair and nearly took his eye out with my elbow. “Damn it, Kai.”
“I don’t want to take it back.” He opened the shower door and stepped out, apparently done with his shower in less than three minutes, and trapped me and the steam back inside.
What did he mean, he didn’t want to take it back?
Why had he bought it?
Why the hell was this day such a rollercoaster? Was it Friday the fucking thirteenth or something?
I still had to finish my shower so I raced through conditioning my hair and washing my body in record time. I apologized to the stubble under my arms that really needed a trim and told myself shaving could wait until tomorrow.
I’d been telling my legs that for a week, mind you.
I turned off the shower and froze.
I didn’t have clean towels.
I’d jumped straight in without thinking.
Ah, shit.
I braced myself for the rush of freezing air that would come at me when I stepped out of the shower cubicle. A shudder wracked my body when it came, and I twisted my hair around my finger so it didn’t drip all over my body, but I didn’t need to worry.
There were two towels sitting on top of the closed toilet seat.
A smile crept over my face despite my best efforts, and I gratefully wrapped myself in the fluffy towels before I left the bathroom.
Noises came from the direction of the kitchen, and I padded across the floor while adjusting my towel, careful not to slip on the wet floor.
“I know what you did with the towels. We’re still talking about the ring.”
“Nothing to talk about,” he said, scooping ice cream into two bowls at the island. “Yes, I cleaned it before you ask.”
I bit back a giggle. “Of course there’s something to talk about.”
“There really isn’t, Ivy. It’s quite simple.”
“Explain it, then.”
“If we don’t make this fake marriage real—which, for the record, I am wholeheartedly against—then it’s a gift to you for the baby. If it’s a girl, she can keep it. If it’s a boy, he can use it to propose to his future wife if he wants.” He shrugged as he put the ice cream back in the freezer. “Like I said. Simple.”
That… was hard to argue with.
Ugh.
Rational points.
I hated it when people made those.
I approached the island. “Damn it. Stop making rational arguments,” I said. “I can’t yell at you when you do that.”
“Would you like to yell at me?”
I dropped my gaze when he slid the ice cream across the counter at me. “I can’t shout at you now, can I? You just gave me ice cream. That would be a cardinal sin.”
“A cardinal sin? Do you swear like that in front of your grandmother?”
I froze. “Shit, my grandmother.”
“What?”
“She wants us to go to bingo with her tomorrow.”
“Bingo? With your grandmother?”
Grimacing, I nodded. “And there’s absolutely no way to get out of it. She knows you’re working at the school this week building the new special education resource building so if you don’t come, she’s going to show up there.”
Kai sighed. “Okay, fine. Do I need to bring my own bingo markers, or…?”
“Seriously? Just like that? You agree?”
“What else do you want me to say? No?” He dug his spoon into his ice cream. “I’ve decided that you obviously have feelings for me, so now we’re dating, which means I have to entertain your eccentric grandma. Now, are you going to eat your ice cream, or are you going to leave it to melt? I don’t want you waking me up at three a.m. bleating about being hungry because you didn’t get a midnight snack.”
I opened my mouth to argue, but I could see it was futile.
Well, it wasn’t. I knew if I opened my mouth right now and told Kai I didn’t want to officially date under the guise of our fake marriage, he’d accept that. That was the kind of person he was… even if he had had a Fred Flintstone moment tonight.
But what would I be fighting? The inevitable? The obvious? The thing I really wanted?
“Stop looking at me like you’re trying to decide whether or not to fight with me,” he said, turning and searching through my fridge. “Ooh, chocolate sauce.”
I took that right out of his hand and lathered my ice cream in it before handing it back. “You can’t have sex with me and demand I be your girlfriend.”
“Ivy, I had sex with you and made you the mother of my child. A girlfriend seems like a relatively low commitment compared to that.”
“Ugh!” I grabbed my bowl and spun around, losing my towel in the process. I ignored it completely and sat on the sofa totally naked, with my bowl of chocolate sauce covered ice cream and my hair twisted in a striped towel.
“Are you just going to eat that ice cream naked?”
“Yes. Yes, I am, Kai, and I’m going to enjoy every minute.”
“Does that mean I win?”
“It means you need to sleep with one eye open, motherfucker.”
He grinned.
Jerk.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN – IVY
“Bingo!” Grandma Rosie jumped out of her seat with far too much energy for her age. “I call bingo!”
Unfortunately for her, Agatha Cates also called bingo at the same time.
“No!” Grams yelled. “That’s mine!”
“Rosie! I yelled it first!”
Mumbles erupted across the bingo hall.
Well, I said mumbles. Elderly people weren’t so great at the whole quiet thing.
“Susanna!” Grams yelled in the direction of the regular bingo caller, waving her card in the air. “It was me!”
“It was me!” Agatha shouted, doing the same with her card. “Susanna!”
“Shut it, Hagatha!” Grams spat, grabbing her cane so she could get to the front quicker than her longtime rival.
Kai leaned over and whispered, “Did she just call her Hagatha?”
I nodded.
“Genius,” he murmured.
“No,” I replied. “Agatha is Tori’s grandmother. It’s a point of contention that both our moms and us are best friends.”
“Do they really hate each other?”