“To you.” Brock raises the champagne flute with a smile, and touches it to the one I’m holding.

The fizzy liquid tickles my tongue. I take just the tiniest sip, savoring it right along with the feeling of success. “To me?” I point to myself. “You’re the one who made it possible for me to go to school full-time, even over the summer. I never could’ve done it on my own. It would’ve taken two or three years at the rate I was going.”

He looks so handsome, standing in front of the fireplace in the living room of our penthouse. Our penthouse. The thought of anything so extravagant being mine still surprises me, even after a year.

His smile widens. “I never really had the chance to do something truly worthwhile with my money. Charity, sure, but you gave me the chance to see the money being put to good use. I had a connection to the outcome. That meant everything.”

“Well, gee. I’m glad I could do that for you.” I giggle.

His lighthearted chuckle shows me how far he’s come. Still serious when the situation calls for it, still a bulldog when it comes to getting his way—especially in business—but when it’s just the two of us, he’s like a totally different person. Relaxed, sweet, indulgent. Everything I ever could’ve asked for, but never thought existed.

The face of his Rolex catches my eye, and I let out a gasp of surprise. “We’ll be late for our reservation if we don’t get a move on. I know how much you hate being late.”

“Who, me?”

I shake my head and roll my eyes. He hasn’t changed all that much. Still a stickler for being on time. I had my choice of any restaurant in the city for our celebration dinner, and Lord knows there were plenty to choose from.

He’s opened my eyes in a million ways, large and small, and our faces are familiar ones in at least a dozen or two of the city’s top establishments. Even so, there’s only one place that came to mind when it came time to choosing the location—the place where we had our first date, which wasn’t a date at the time but was definitely the night when I first started falling in love with him. There’s a beautiful symmetry to it.

It isn’t until we’ve settled in at our favorite table that he leans over and takes my hand. “What’s next, then?”

“Next?”

“For you? What do you want to do, now that school’s over? Travel? Grad school? You realize you can do anything. I wouldn’t deny you for the world. Just name it.”

I pretend to think about it, looking up at the ceiling as I chew my bottom lip. “I don’t know. There’s a project I’ve had in mind.”

“Really? You never mentioned anything about a project.”

“Well, I only started really thinking about it a few hours ago.”

“What’s it all about?”

The best part of all of this is how innocent he is. Totally clueless. I don’t know whether to laugh or kiss him. “It’s sort of long-term,” I start, winding my fingers around his. “Extremely, actually.”

His eyes narrow. “You’re considering something long-term and you didn’t mention it to me until now?”

“I can’t help it.” I shrug, biting back a smile. “If anything, you’re the one responsible.”

“Me?”

I wait while the wheels turn in his head. Understanding begins to blossom. He glances at my still-full wine glass. Maybe he even remembers how I only took a slight sip of my celebratory champagne. I don’t know what’s going through his mind, exactly. Only that he’s finally starting to get it.

“Are you—saying what I think you’re s-saying?”

“I am,” I whisper, suddenly nervous.

There is no smile on his face.

What if he’s not happy? We’ve only ever spoken of a family in the vaguest of terms, agreeing that we’d want to start one sometime in the future but never stating when.

His face is still unreadable. A blank canvas. “You’re going to have a baby?”

“Yes,” I breathe the word out, and my heart is barely beating anymore. I want so much for him to be happy, as happy as I was when I first realized I was pregnant. I did three tests. I wanted to be absolutely sure. My head’s been in a whirl all day, my imagination spinning all sorts of stories for my baby. Our baby. The person they’ll become, thanks to us.

I only need to know that he wants this as much as I do.

He sits back in his chair and lets out a sharp burst of air. “A baby.”

“That’s what I said.”

Just when I am about to die with unhappiness, his face just about cracks open, and my heart cracks open with it. Thank God.

His smile shines almost bright enough to blind me. “A baby? Our baby. Oh, Dani!”

“You’re happy?”

“Happy? That doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel right now. Did you ever have that feeling like all your dreams are coming true at once?”

I run my hand over the side of his handsome dear face and stare deep into his sweet blue eyes. There’s nothing in the entire world that means more to me than he does. I’ve never felt as loved, supported, protected, and secure as I have in this last year of our lives together.

My eyes fill with tears of joy, and I nod. “Yes. I know exactly how that feels.”

“Hey, you’re not crying?” His voice is choked up. Brock simply can’t bear to see me cry, even from happiness. It’s such a funny thing because he is such a hard-headed businessman. I hear him sometimes talking on the phone in his study and his voice is so cold, demanding and foreign that I actually think it can’t be him.

I’ll go into the room out of sheer surprise and curiosity, and he will almost immediately put the person on hold and turn to me, his voice changed back to the one I am familiar with. No matter how long I am in that room, he will make whoever was on the phone wait. I’ve come to the conclusion that he is two different people. The one everyone else gets to see and the one he shows me. So, I don’t do that to him anymore. Nowadays I wait until he comes out of his study, when he has removed and put away the mask he wears for the world.

I gaze at his handsome face now and smile. “I heard that a new baby is a very demanding thing and newbie parents get so tired they never have any energy for sex.”

His head jerks back with surprise. “What?”

“It looks like we won’t be having very much sex once the baby comes.”

“We won’t?” he repeats slowly, staring at me.

“Apparently not.”

His eyes smolder with blue fire. “Not even if I do all the work.”

“There is also the issue of lack of time.”

He grins. “I’ll be quick.”

“So I was thinking…” I reach over with my index finger and very slowly start to push my clutch towards the edge of the table. His eyes flick over to my finger, then back to my face. As I continue to push my clutch, his eyes leave mine and follow the trajectory of the purse. As it reaches tipping point and falls, he returns his gaze to me.

“Oops,” I say breathlessly. “I seem to have dropped my purse.”

“It would seem that way,” he says, his eyes unreadable.

“Would you be so kind as to pick it up for me?”

When he bends down to pick up my purse, I widen my thighs, and give him an eyeful. For a few seconds he seems frozen, then he jerks back up, his eyes blazing.

“Jesus, Dani, you’ve been walking around this whole time without your panties.”

“Mmm…”

“Well, it’s fucking time to get you home,” he mutters.

I flutter my eyelashes. “Oh, but I’ve been waiting all night to have my dessert.”

“You can have it to go.”

I pout. “It’s not the same. I want that cinnamon and pear thing they do with apple ice cream. The ice cream will melt by the time we get home.”

“You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you?”

“What do you think?”

“I think, Dani Saber, you should be very careful when you play with fire.”

I laugh and lift my hand. A waiter instantly materializes beside us. “Can we have your pear tart to share please.”

“Of course, madam,” he says with a respectful nod before disappearing. I turn to look at Brock.

“You are in so much trouble,” he warns.

“I know,” I purr.