“And when are you going to be back?”

“I don’t know yet, buddy.” I glanced at Hunter in the mirror. He was eyeing me with interest, clearly keen to know how this date with Autumn was going to do. You and me both.

“Okay.” He furrowed his brow. “Will you say hello to her? From me?”

“I will,” I promised him. I had gone back and forth on whether to tell Hunter I was going out with Autumn that evening, but I figured it was for the best to tell him the truth—well, the edited version of it, at least. He didn’t need to know I’d been planning out every detail of this date down to the letter ever since she’d agreed to this. I wanted to prove to Autumn that I was able to give her what she wanted, in every sense of that word.

“Oh, look. We’re here,” I remarked as I pulled into Raymond’s driveway. Hunter was looking forward to spending the night with Raymond, but I knew he would have rather come along on the date with Autumn and me. In his head, it would be nothing different from the day we’d all spent together on the yacht, chaste and friendly and involving him. Little did he know everything I had planned for her tonight.

Hunter hopped out of the car, grabbing his backpack to his chest, and made for the door. I followed him. Olivia pulled it open before I got there and gave my son a hug.

“Hey, Holden.” She smiled at me. “How’s it going?”

“Pretty good.” I nodded. “You?”

“Actually starting to feel like I got some sleep for the first time in months.” She rolled her eyes playfully. “I don’t know how you did it all by yourself.”

“Well, I’m a superhero, obviously.” I winked at Hunter, and Olivia laughed.

“You joke, but I think it might be true,” she remarked. “You want to stick around to see Raymond? He’s just finishing up with the baby.”

“No, I think I’ve got to get going.” I glanced at my watch. “Don’t want to be late.”

She nodded. “All right. Have a good time. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“See you later,” I replied. “And thanks for looking after Hunter for me.”

“Always a pleasure.” She smiled and then pushed the door shut and left me out there all by myself. Which meant I had no other option but to climb in my car and go pick up Autumn.

I was nervous as hell as I drove over there. I had spent all week putting this together, and I was a little fearful that she was still going to think it was too much. But I had taken in what she said to me when we’d been on that yacht. Surely, she would enjoy herself, given that she had pretty much planned this date for herself.

I arrived outside her place and remembered the last time I’d come here—when we hooked up for the first time, when I sat there in this car for a moment wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life. Well, it had turned out pretty well for me in the long run. I grinned as I got out of the car and headed to the door, adjusting the collar of my shirt. I was wearing the suit she’d helped me pick out back in the days when we’d been pretending to be nothing but friends.

I knocked on the door, and a moment later, she opened it. She was wearing a dress I hadn’t seen before, dark and sweet, curving in to draw attention to the shape of her body in a way I couldn’t tear my gaze from. I looked her up and down, unable to stop myself, and raised my eyebrows.

“You look incredible,” I told her, and she bit her lip. For a second, I wanted nothing more than to cancel the date and go into that house to recreate what we shared that first time around, but I knew I had to get her out of the house before we did anything like that.

“Is that the suit I picked out for you?” she asked as she stepped over the threshold, linking her arm through mine happily. I nodded.

“Looks good on you.” She briefly leaned her head on my shoulder. “Are you going to tell me what’s going on tonight? Or do I have to guess?”

“I promise it’s nothing to do with a yacht,” I replied. “Is that enough?”

“I guess it’s going to have to be,” she agreed as she slipped into the car next to me, and I pulled away to head into the center of the city.

We chatted about her week so far, and she told me those after-school clubs would be starting soon and that Hunter had been asking about them. That made me smile. He was starting to open up a little, and that was all I’d wanted from this whole endeavor in the first place. Everything else that had come with it, like her hand resting on my leg as we drove? Well, that was a sweet-ass bonus.

Eventually, I pulled the car to a halt outside a park. I had spent hours trawling for the perfect one, and I was pretty sure I’d found it—big enough that we could get some privacy, but not so big, I was going to end up getting lost in there. Clean and pretty but not overcrowded. She looked into the park and cocked an eyebrow.

“And what might we be doing here?” she asked, grinning. I helped her out of the car and then went to the back seat to grab the picnic basket I’d filled with food for us. She beamed when she saw me pull it out.

“You’re taking me on a picnic?” she asked, clasping her hands together with delight. I nodded.

“Like you said you wanted to on the yacht, remember?” I reminded her, suddenly panicked she would think I’d pulled this out of my ass. She nodded.

“Of course, I do,” she sighed happily. “I didn’t even think you’d remember.”

“Well, I was hardly going to forget.” I cocked my head at her. “Come on, let’s find a spot, and we can eat. I’m starving.”

“Me too,” she agreed, and she tucked one hand into mine as I hefted the basket under one arm while we turned into the park. My head felt as though it was spinning, my feet not quite touching the ground. I was so glad she was here by my side and that she liked my date idea. I was pulling this off. I was totally pulling this off.

We walked for a while through the park, and I had to admit, this was pretty nice. I would never have thought to come to a place like this without her, but there was something calm about it. It was hard to imagine the city was ten minutes from here when it was so peaceful out in the park. We made our way down a small lane lined with trees and a few twinkling streetlights as the sun began to set in the distance.

“This is perfect,” Autumn sighed as we came to a small clearing slightly off the path and settled down to eat. “Thank you, Holden.”

“Hey, thanks for giving me the idea.” I held my hands up. “Saved me the trouble of having to come up with something myself.”

She slapped my shoulder playfully, laughing, and then helped me unpack the food and the blanket so we could eat. I wasn’t sure what she liked, so I went for a mix of anything I could find—fruit, cheese, bread, chocolate, and a couple of pastries.

“This looks amazing,” she said when we had it all spread out in front of us. I could see her eyes shining even in the dim light from the streetlamps a few dozen feet away.

“Good.” I smiled back at her, leaned over, and stole a brief kiss. We couldn’t go any further than that out here in public, but I just needed to kiss her, to touch her. I was already obsessed with how damn good she felt, how sweet it was being alone with her like this. She still had her eyes closed as I pulled away, as though she was savoring the feeling of my lips on hers.

We tucked into our food, and I found myself relaxing a little. I had been so nervous about this date, worried I was somehow going to fuck everything up and make a fool of myself in some way I hadn’t anticipated. But this was going well. Really well. We were laughing about something that had happened at her school about her best friend, Zoe, and her desire to land one of my friends. I told Autumn the chances were pretty slim, since about the only friend I had around was Raymond, and he was happily married.

“How did you meet him?” she asked, tearing off a piece of bread and popping it into her mouth. “Oh my God, this bread is so good.”

“We met in college.” I shrugged. “Ages ago. When I started the business, he invested and helped out a little to get things off the ground. Took his share when they started trying for a baby and now he’s set for life.”

“Damn.” She raised her eyebrows. “Too late to go back in time and invest in you myself?”

“A little.” I grinned.

“I thought you ran the business by yourself,” she said. “No staff or anything.”

“Well, since we were friends, I didn’t consider him staff,” I replied. “And it’s not like he’s coming back any time soon. Though it would help me out if he could.”

“Why? You looking to hire someone?” She cocked an eyebrow. “And here, I thought you’d be too much of a control freak for that.”

“Yeah, you and me both,” I admitted. “I’ve been pushing back against it for a long time, but I think I might have to hire someone soon.”

“Oh, yeah?” She raised her eyebrows. “Why?”

“Oh, it’s getting a little too much for me to juggle everything,” I replied, keeping it vague so she wouldn’t catch onto the fact that she was the reason things had started going downhill at work.

“Well, you’ve got the money to do it, and I’m pretty sure there’d be dozens of people fighting to work with someone as well-established as you,” she pointed out. “You should go for it.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.” She nodded, pulling off a grape from the bunch and slipping it between her lips. For the briefest second, her fingers played over her mouth, and I wanted nothing more than to forget about work entirely.

“But you have to do what you think is right for you,” she finished up. “If you don’t think you can handle someone else working at the business, then don’t do it. It’s your place, after all.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I had expected her to encourage me to go ahead and hire someone, but maybe she understood better than I had anticipated the passion that came from building something all by yourself.

“Mmm, I’m so full.” She slumped back on the blanket and tilted her head toward the sky. There was a smile on her face, and her eyes had drifted shut, and she looked so beautiful, it almost hurt me. I wanted nothing more than to lean over and plant my mouth against hers, to move on top of her and render that gorgeous dress pointless, but there was something else I had in mind first. We had done her part of the date, and next, we were going to do mine.

“Got room for a little something extra?” I asked, and she opened one eye and looked at me.

“I’m listening.”