“So …” I rested my hip against the counter and lifted my favorite mug to my mouth. “We should probably talk about this family dinner.”

Victoria groaned and covered her face. “Do we have to?” She parted her fingers and looked at me hopefully. “Couldn’t we put it off just a little bit longer?”

I chuckled. “We could, but it might be awkward tomorrow.”

After last night, there was no way I could sit across from her and not give my feelings away. As I’d stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning for a good two minutes, I’d been forced to acknowledge that I wore the face of a lovesick fool. One look at the way I stared adoringly at their sister, and the Witherspoon brothers would know in an instant how far gone on her I really was.

“Fine.” She dropped her hands onto my dining table and sighed dramatically. “Let’s get this over with. Commence discussion.”

I set my mug aside and hopped up onto the counter. “Since I have no intention of letting you leave my apartment anytime soon, we could go together? It would make my dear old dad happy to hear that we were getting along so well.” I waggled my brows suggestively.

“Eww, gross.” Victoria scrunched up her nose and then pointed down at the shirt she wore.

The sleeves of the white button down I’d had on last night were rolled up to her elbows and she wasn’t wearing anything underneath it. Naked, she was a sight to behold, but dressed in my clothes, sitting at my table after a night of fantastic sex? Well, that was something else entirely. If I had things my way, this was how we’d wake up everyday.

Alas, I was forced to begrudgingly admit that she had a point. She couldn’t show up to dinner up dressed for a date, nor could she arrive in nothing but her panties and my shirt. As much as I wanted the world to know she was mine, that was stretching things.

“Fine,” I conceded. “I suppose it makes sense for you to go home to change before heading over.”

“Do you mind if I shower first? After I finish breakfast, of course.” She held up her glass of orange juice.

“I have a better idea. Since I’ve waited a month to see you and haven’t gotten anywhere my fill yet, you should stay a few more hours. Call me selfish, but I don’t want to let you out of my sight a moment sooner than I have to.”

She slid out of her seat and came to stand between my legs. Wrapping her arms around my neck, she said, “While I appreciate the sentiment, I really don’t want to overstay my welcome. I wouldn’t want you to get tired of me.”

“Not going to happen.” I dropped a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. “I could spend the next hundred years with you and never get tired of seeing your beautiful face.”

I was coming dangerously close to making a declaration I couldn’t take back, but suddenly I didn’t care. I wanted Victoria to know how I felt. This wasn’t some dalliance. Despite the difficulties we may face, I wanted a relationship with this woman. I just hoped she wanted one with me too.

Unfortunately, the sparkle in Victoria’s eyes dimmed and her smile fell. “That’s a lovely thought, David, but we both know why that can’t happen.”

“Is it really so bad, you and me being together?”

She shook her head. “No, but we aren’t the only people whose feelings we have to take into consideration.”

I snorted. “Right, because my dad has done such a terrific job on that front.”

I’d forgiven him for running off with Jenny, but I didn’t know if I’d ever be able to forget that he’d prioritized his selfish wants over that of his only child. He’d known how I’d felt about her, and yet he’d married her anyway. It had never even occurred to him not to.

Victoria’s fingers skated over the back of my neck soothingly. “If it were just your dad, I’d say to hell with it and hire a skywriter to tell the world how I feel about you. But it’s not just him. It’s my mom too, and she made her thoughts on the subject abundantly clear.” Her brows furrowed into a frown. “For some reason, she’s all in with this whole ‘one big happy family’ thing. While I don’t get it, she honestly believes it’s wrong for me to have a crush on you.”

“Is that what this is? A crush?”

She chewed her lip for a few long seconds. “No. You know it’s not. But we can’t be together. Not the way we want to, at least.”

Given enough time, I thought I could persuade her to reconsider, but if I pushed her now, we’d only end up arguing. Seeing as we only had a few more hours together, I chose the path of least resistance and changed the subject.

“What you tell the skywriter to say?” I locked my ankles at the back of her thighs to hold her in place.

Victoria’s lips formed a pretty little pout, and she tapped the pad of her index finger against them a few times. “First,” she mused, as if deep in thought, “it would say that you’re the most handsome man I’ve ever met.”

“I am, huh?”

While I worked hard to keep my body in peak physical condition, my face was a result of my genetics. Barring plastic surgery, I really had no control over what I looked like. And while I knew Victoria found me attractive, her saying that I was the most handsome man she’d ever met fed my fragile ego. I didn’t like to examine it too closely, but after Stacia had left me for a guy who could have graced the cover of magazines, I’d gone through a dark period wondering if things would have been different if only I’d been taller, tanner, and blonder. The guy had been built like Thor, whereas I was more of a Loki.

She nodded. “And one of the smartest.”

“Only one of the smartest? You wound me.” I pressed my hand to my chest in mock distress.

She smiled then, and it lit up her whole face. “You never met my father. He lays claim to the top spot. You can be the second smartest man I’ve ever met.”

“I can live with that.” I pulled her in against me and wrapped her up in my arms … right where she belonged. “Do you want to know what my message in the sky would say about you?”

As the words tumbled from my lips, my heart thumped frantically in my chest. I knew it was too soon to put it out there like this, but I wanted Victoria to know that when things got tough and our situation seemed untenable, that I was all in.

When I’d gotten divorced, I never thought I’d feel this way again, but she’d somehow managed to thaw the block of ice that had protected my heart from further damage.

“What would it say?”

“It would say that I met the most amazing woman in the most unlikely of places, and from the moment I heard her cursing Faulkner, I was a changed man.”

She leaned away and captured my gaze. “That’s a really long message.”

“It is. But that’s only part of it.” I stared into her eyes for a few seconds, willing her to see the truth in my words. To see them, and to feel them to the depths of her kind, generous soul. “It would also say that I started falling in love with that woman the first night we met.”

Victoria’s eyes went wide. “David ...”

I pressed my finger to her lips. I had zero expectation of hearing a similar confession, nor did I want her to say something she didn’t mean just to placate my ego. “ I just wanted you to know how I feel.”

She pressed a kiss to my finger and pulled away. “I …” She sucked in a deep breath. “I want this with you. So, so much.”

I should have been happy to hear those words, but I also heard what she wasn’t saying. There was a ‘but’ in there somewhere.

“But?”

Her hands slid away from my neck, and she took a step back. I unlocked my legs to let her go, and watched as she shuffled several to the other side of the room.

I could have crossed my kitchen in a few quick strides to be back by her side, but the distance the separated us seemed somehow prophetic. As if the divide that existed between us wouldn’t be an easy one to conquer.

“But the timing is all wrong,” she answered sadly, turning to face me once again.

“It’s certainly not the best.”

I wasn’t a stupid man. I knew we faced an uphill battle, but I also knew it wasn’t an insurmountable one. The problem was, Victoria thought it was.

She rested her pert, juicy ass against the table, her palms pressed flat into the wood behind her. She wore an air of inevitability, and her face was laced with sadness that I knew was reflected on my own. “I care about you,” she eventually said. “Please don’t ever doubt that.”

“I don’t. I know you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t.”

She blew out a breath and glanced away. “So, what do we do now?”

I sighed and hopped off the counter. I didn’t have the foggiest notion how to answer. If it were solely up to me, I’d heft Victoria into my arms and carry her to my bedroom where I’d spend the rest of the day making love to her, but it wasn’t only up to me.

In fact, it wasn’t up to me at all.

I was powerless to deny Victoria what she wanted, even if that was to pretend this had ever happened. It wouldn’t be easy, but for her sake, I’d try my damnedest.

“Now, I suppose you take that shower, and we see each other tonight.”

Victoria pushed off the table, and her eyes zeroed in on mine with purpose. “Would you hate me terribly if I said before then I wanted you to make love to me again?”

I reached for her hand and laced our fingers together. Bringing it to my lips, I placed a kiss on the inside of her palm. “I could never hate you.”

“You’re not mad that I’m sending you mixed signals?”

I shook my head and began leading Victoria toward my bedroom. “I know what we have is real,” I said, pulling her into my room and down onto the bed. Propped up on my elbow, I added, “But I also know you need time.”

I straddled her, and began undoing the buttons at her chest, teasing her as I went.

“Time?” Her voice came out as a whisper.

My eyes found hers. “Time to convince yourself that what we’re doing isn’t wrong. Time to realize that you’re in love with me, too.”

Her eyes turned glassy, her unshed tears sparkling up at me. “I don’t need time for that, David. I’ve known I was in love with you from our very first kiss.”

“Good,” I said, taking my dick in hand and coating it with the evidence of her arousal. “Don’t ever forget it.” I captured her mouth and thrust deep, my cock sliding into her wet heat.

And then I spent the next two hours doing everything I could to make sure Victoria would remember this moment for the rest of her life.