Jana

Six hours until a week of vacation.

I give the cats a sidelong glance from where I’m sitting at my new desk in my new office. Our new office, really, because their brand-new, top-of-the-line cat trees take up half the room. This isn’t a hardship because the room is massive, and I have cat mom guilt about upsetting their world order in such a significant way.

Can they sense I’m abandoning them?

It’s been a big adjustment. We moved to New York a month ago and Larken still spends most of her time under the armoire in the corner.

Kitten loves the forest of carpet-covered climbing things, though. And the boys do, too. Jake’s bribes have worked on three feline friends, and Larken will get there eventually, too.

“You guys will be well taken care of this week,” I tell them.

They ignore me, so I look out the window. I didn’t even realize until I moved in that the apartment had a view of the park. This room is beside his home gym, and I couldn’t believe it when I realized it was unused.

He just shrugged and said he prefers the other side of the building because it’s quieter.

Ha. Like the faint soundtrack of New York traffic is a negative. Not for this girl. I’m living every romantic comedy movie I grew up watching. Plus in my version, it doesn’t end with a kiss in the park.

I blush as I think about the way Jake woke me up in the early morning, with a long, slow, dirty kiss between my legs.

“Gotta go to work,” he’d whispered. “Be back mid-afternoon.”

I’m cramming to get my own work done, too.

Well, at the moment I’m staring out the window and thinking about what I’ve packed for a week in the Hamptons. It’s all a part of the creative process.

I doodle an oversized beach umbrella with feet sticking out from beneath it. Not exactly the task on my to-do list, but it’s a drawing and I’m an illustrator and ha—productive.

I frown and reach for my phone.

He sends back a heart emoji and I spin in my chair. Beach umbrellas and heart emojis deserve an extra bikini in the suitcase. Productivity can wait.

On my way back from the bedroom, the dedicated phone line from downstairs rings. Jake’s made it clear that if I’m working and don’t want to be disturbed, I don’t need to answer it, but since I’m already up, I think it’s polite to acknowledge whatever it is.

“Hello?”

“Good morning, Miss Jana. It’s Pierre.”

“Good morning, Pierre. How are you?”

“Excellent, thank you. There is a delivery here for you that requires a signature, and the driver will not allow me to sign on your behalf. I tried to explain how things are usually done, but he’s insistent.”

“That’s fine, send him up.” I’m not expecting anything from work, but given that Nina knows I’m going away with all of Jake’s friends for a week, I’m sure she’s sent a C.O.D. box of sex toys or something.

I wait until the elevator dings, and then I push the button that opens the doors from our side.

Standing in the middle of the elevator is a tall, dark, and very handsome SwiftEx driver. He’s wearing a different uniform than the last time I saw him, and his legs look impossibly good in brown shorts.

“Summer uniform now?” I ask, my breath hitching as I gobble him up with my gaze.

Jake grins and hands over a clipboard. Oh, so we’re doing the whole role-play thing. Hot. This isn’t one of the fancy digital clipboards he had in Baltimore, but an old paper form. “Sign on the first line. Date on the right.”

“And what am I signing for, exactly?” I ask as I scrawl my name. “Do I get to choose what package I want?”

He chuckles as I flick my gaze back to him, then drag it down his body. We both know what package I want. It’s big and thick and—

“You don’t need to choose,” he says as his hands swing into view. “Well, I hope you’ll be interested in all the packages I’ve brought today. Bit sneaky, getting you to sign for it first, sight unseen.”

In his right hand is a ring box.

Black. Velvet. Square.

A ring box.

I’m frozen, staring at a ring box in front of his crotch, but it doesn’t matter because he lowers himself to one knee, bringing the rest of him into view.

“From the second I laid eyes on you, I wanted to know you. You captivate me. And every minute, day, week, and month that has passed since has brought a new layer to our relationship. Laughter and affection, passion and tenderness, and a love bigger and stronger than I ever could have imagined. You are the most beautiful, intelligent, kind, and funny woman I’ve ever met, and I want to be your husband.” He flips open the ring box and lifts up an obscenely large square-cut diamond set in a platinum band. I gasp out loud, but that doesn’t distract him from what he says next. “I want you to be my wife, forever. Will you marry me?”

Forever and always. I nod, not trusting my words, and he stands, sliding the ring onto my left hand before tugging those fingers hard against his chest. His other hand braces wide across my back.

“Was that a yes?”

“Yes,” I breathe. “Yes, yes, ye—”

His mouth covers mine in a searing, claiming kiss that just keeps going. He dips me back until I squeak and wrap my arms around him tight, and he keeps on kissing me. Soft, pulling touches of his lips against mine. Hungry pushes of his tongue. Each kiss is a different reflection of all the love between us, and I give as good as I get. We make something amazing between us, and now that he’s asked, I’m not surprised, but whoa, was I ever a few minutes ago.

“I really like the uniform,” I whisper as he trails kisses over my jaw and down my neck. “I love your suits, but I missed the uniform.”

“I’m keeping this one. Might get married in it.”

I giggle. “Okay.”

“Although I do like the way you do my ties when I wear a tux…”

I sigh. “Yes, that’s good, too. We can decide later.”

I already know what I’m wearing. That lace dress the stylists brought for me to consider for the Met. I shiver as I think about Jake seeing me in it for the first time.

But right now, I’ve got a brown delivery uniform to strip him out of. I undo the top button and slide my fingers over the hard plane of his chest I’ve just uncovered. “Do you have any more deliveries to make today?”

“This is actually the end of my route,” he says, giving me a cocky grin that wouldn’t be out of place at the start of a filthy fantasy.

“In that case, you should stay a while. I could…” I giggle as he hauls me hard against his chest and I undo another two buttons. “Make you lemonade. Oh, Delivery Guy, it’s so hot out there today. Or…”

“Or.” His eyes darken as he works his hands under my shirt. “Yes, let’s jump straight to the or.”

“Well I just got a very special, very personal delivery, and I’d very much like to celebrate that.” I lick my lips. “Right here.”

My clothes go flying, and I do my best to keep up with him, but Jake has special undressing skills. He’s a strip-me-down-for-sex ninja. When he’s ripping off my panties, I’ve just reached his belt, and that’s as far as I get. He takes me hard and fast on the tile floor, bracing his hands on either side of my head as I hold on tight to his body.

“We have a bed,” he says when we’re done and lying flat on our backs side-by-side. “Why didn’t we use it?”

“Because this was fun?”

“It was. Is. I’ll have to wear the uniform again for your birthday.”

I laugh, and he joins in. We laugh together and it grows in intensity until my sides hurt, but I don’t care because I’m sharing a laugh with my fiancé and he plays dress-up to make me happy.

“I need to call Nina and Daisy,” I finally manage to say as I get up off the floor. “And my parents.”

He cups the back of my neck and kisses me again before nodding. “Right. I should advise my mother as well.” I laugh and poke him in the side for the formality and he rolls his eyes. “And…I should tell the guys we’re going to celebrate tonight.”

“I don’t know where my phone is.” I turn in a distracted circle, then stop to look at my ring. “Wow.”

He pats my bare bum. “Phone.”

“Right.” I wiggle my finger, making light bounce all over the place. “In a second.”

He finds his own phone a few feet away, in his discarded uniform shirt, and taps on the screen. My phone rings distantly, and he heads for the office.

“I would have eventually fetched it,” I say when he returns.

“Sure. But this way you get to admire the ring, and I get to do something for you, and both of those things will lead to more sex.”

“One-track mind.”

“Not denying that.”

We head to bed to make our phone calls, curled up in an excited pile of naked limbs. I connect with Nina first, and she wants to see the ring right away, do not pass GO, do not collect $200.

I cover the phone and whisper to Jake, “How much time do we have?”

He stops mid text message. “That depends. Are we going to Costco?”

“We can do that another time. A proposal kind of tops a beach umbrella.”

“Then there’s lots of time. The helicopter is standing by for us.”

Seven words I’ll never get used to hearing. I give him a quick kiss before telling Nina she can come over in half an hour.

Then I talk to my parents, and finally Daisy.

Jake talks to his mother, and when I put down my phone, he’s back to texting. He’s slung one arm behind his head, and I trace the curve of his biceps up from the dark shock of hair in his armpit to his elbow and back down again.

I should get dressed. Nina will be here soon. But his body is right here in front of me. How am I supposed to resist touching him?

My fiancé.

Not enough heart emojis in the world.

“Oh, wow,” he says as his phone chimes.

“What?”

He turns his phone toward me so I can see the screen.