“Why exactly do we have to get married again?” Carolina asked out of the blue once he’d settled her into the passenger seat of his truck.
Carolina had serious fight or flight syndrome when it came to commitment. Frankly, he was shocked she’d agreed to that part of the deal. He’d actually thrown it in as a treat to himself—because it pleased him to force her to do something she so clearly didn’t want to. Besides, a marriage license wasn’t guaranteed to get her to stick around any better than it had the first time, which was why he planned on keeping her armed and ready for combat instead.
“Makes it harder for you to resist me,” he informed her and mimed shooting her in the arm with his index finger. His signature gesture. If he’d been on the air, he’d have accompanied it with a kachow, which his viewers loved. “And because. I told you. My viewers are trying to keep their relationships together, not hook up.”
“And how are they going to take it when we split up again?”
The better question was how he’d take it. Badly, was the answer, which was why he couldn’t let her get under his skin again. More to the point, he couldn’t let her know she’d gotten under his skin because he had a feeling that ship had sailed the moment she’d opened the door.
“Who said we were splitting up?” He shot her a lazy grin. “My plan is to be so amazing of a husband that you never want to leave.”
“Ha. Since it’s my condo, I already don’t want to leave.”
“Mission accomplished. That was easy.”
In a totally unexpected move, she leaned over the center console and let her fingers trail up his arm, exploring all the peaks and valleys that he worked hard at the gym to maintain. He swallowed as his skin heated under her fingertips.
“Well, you know,” she purred. “It is hard to resist you.”
“Uh… it is?”
“Sure. I mean, who wouldn’t want a piece of that pretty face? And your shoulders.” She squeezed the area in question playfully, accompanying it with a tiny growl that rumbled through his chest. “Poetry.”
“Since when do you care one whit about what a man looks like?” he asked even as his eyes crossed hard enough to blur the center line on the pavement. Carolina had gotten dangerous in all new and different ways.
“I figured as long as we weren’t taking any of this seriously, I should get in on that action.” She batted her big blues at him like the coquette she’d apparently tried on for size—and wore brilliantly, not that he’d tell her that.
“What is your fascination with whether I have the capacity to be serious or not?” he asked her, baffled by the sudden turn. “I’m marrying you, aren’t I? That’s as serious as a heart attack. Probably as deadly, too.”
“Just wanted to be sure what I was dealing with here.” She stared out the front windshield, a tiny, enigmatic smile on her face. Her fingers were long gone from his arm, the heat of which he keenly missed. “Still the same old Charlie.”
It wasn’t like he had any shot at being anyone else. “Same Charlie that millions of people love.”
Except for the one woman he’d wanted to love him.
