“This.”
Yup, she was definitely going to have to rip his balls off just as soon as he pulled over and shut the engine off.
“It’s a little too late for that, don’t you think?” she pointed out through gritted teeth.
He shook his head, keeping his focus on the road. “No, it’s not.”
“You want to fill me in before I start having paranoid thoughts about being left by the side of the road with a kid in tow?” she suggested, dropping her hands and sitting back to-
Squeal as he suddenly veered off the road, slammed the brakes and threw the truck in park. Panting hard, she found herself sitting there, gripping her seatbelt tightly as she stared straight ahead, watching as the dust began to settle around the truck.
“Stop doing that!” she snapped, closing her eyes as she swallowed in an attempt to catch her breath.
For several minutes he didn’t say anything and her pounding heart thanked him for that. While they sat there, him staring off into space and her trying to calm down, she studied him. He sat there, gripping the wheel, his jaw locked and pointedly not looking at her while dread filled her. He couldn’t be doing this to her. Not now, not after she’d allowed herself to fall in love with him. He just……he couldn’t.
“I love you, Cloe,” he started off saying and just like that, she knew that it was over.
“You f**king bastard,” she said, shaking her head in disgust as she reached down and struggled to release her seatbelt, but the damn thing refused to release her.
“Cloe-”
“I don’t want to hear it,” she snapped, struggling with the damn seatbelt. Why the hell wasn’t it releasing her? She needed to get out of here before he could say another word. She didn’t want to hear this.
God, she’d been so stupid to fall in love with him, she berated herself as her hands shook and her sight went red. She should have never-
“Shhhh,” Christofer said, reaching over and releasing the seatbelt for her. Before she could make her escape he’d picked her up and pulled her onto his lap, forcing her to straddle him and sit there as he broke her heart.
“Let me go, Christofer!”
“Never,” he whispered, leaning in to kiss her, but she turned her head, refusing to allow him to kiss her and make this worse.
When she tried to move off his lap, he reached up and cupped her face so that he could lean forward and rest his forehead against hers. “I can’t do this, mein Schatz. I’m sorry. I love you so damn much, but I can’t just meekly walk into this future and put my dreams on hold again. I can’t do it.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you got me pregnant,” she bit out angrily as she attempted once more to get off his lap, but he refused to let her go.
He ignored her struggles as he tilted his head and brushed his lips against hers. “I want to see the world with you, mein Schatz,” he whispered softly against her lips.
“W-what?” she asked, feeling herself soften in his arms.
He pulled back so that he could look in her eyes as he explained, “I’ve always wanted to see the world, visit historical sights, famous museums and to see what I could do with my art, but now,” he smiled as his eyes devoured her, “now I want to take you with me. I want to take you to fancy French restaurants, to walk with you through the Highlands, to make love to you in some ridiculously expensive Italian villa, to hold you in my arms while we watch the sun set on a different continent, to go for midnight swims with you and to make love to you on a beach.”
“There is just so much that I want to do with you,” he admitted hoarsely. “I want to have a life with you, to raise a family with you, but first-”
“You want to see the world?” she guessed with a wobbly smile.
“Yes,” he said, before rushing on to explain, “I want this life with you, the one where we plant some roots and watch our sons grow into men, but I need to do this with you now, because I don’t think I’ll be able to survive the next eighteen years without knowing how it feels to have salt water lapping at our toes while I make love to you on the beach.”
“And if I say no?” she asked, having absolutely no plans on refusing this man.
“Then I’ll turn this truck back around and we’ll go start our lives.”
“And you’d be okay with that?” she asked, watching him as he nodded.
“I’d do anything to make you happy, mein Schatz,” he swore as he sat back, patiently waiting for her answer.
One look at the expression on his face and she knew that he would give up his dreams for her in a heartbeat. In that moment she knew that he truly loved her, which was a good thing since she was head over heels in love with the brooding bastard.
Smiling, she leaned in and asked, “So, where should we go first?”
“Where do you want to go?” he asked, his deep voice sending tremors through her body and making her toes curl with pleasure. Speaking of toes……
“How about the beach………”
Epilogue
Three months later…..
French Riviera
“I’m fat,” Cloe said, pouting as she nibbled on some fancy French pastry that he wasn’t even going to attempt to name out of fear that he would say the wrong name and spark her interest, resulting in him making another midnight run to the all the bakeries in the area.
“You’re beautiful,” he told her, leaning in to press a kiss against her forehead while he placed his hand over the very noticeable baby bump that she was now sporting.
“I’m fat,” she muttered pathetically as she took another bite of the decadent dessert and adjusted the towel she’d wrapped around her after her bath.
“Beautiful,” he corrected her, pulling away and picking up his pencil stub from the patio table as he returned his focus back to his sketchpad.
“You’re just saying that out of fear that my hormones will make me homicidal again,” she grumbled, making him chuckle.
“You are truly dangerous, mein Schatz,” he admitted, only half teasing.
When she didn’t say anything for several minutes, he became understandably worried, afraid that he’d somehow caused her to cry again. He looked up only to find the woman that he loved, the very hormonal woman that he loved, sending him the look that he was all too familiar with by now.
Knowing what was coming next, he placed his sketchpad and pencil down. He reached for her only to have her push his hands away as she stood up and dropped the towel, exposing her back to the moonlight as she leaned forward and placed her hands against the stone wall that surrounded their private villa. When she sent him a sultry smile over her shoulder, he found himself going to her.