Part-Time Lover (Part-Time Lover #1)(41)

I laugh as we walk the pathway that weaves through this festive park in the heart of the city. “You practically squealed like a little girl the first time the eagle soared upside down.”

He stares at me, his brow knitted. “Little girl? I think you’re confusing me with someone else.”

I pat his very firm bicep on his very strong arm and go along with him. “Yes, you’re right, dear husband. It must have been someone less manly and less tough.”

He smiles at me, mischief tap-dancing across his blue eyes. “Exactly.” He bumps his shoulder against mine and whispers, “Hey.”

That one syllable comes out sweetly, affectionately, and I add another pro in his column. That chart is weighted so heavily to one side, it’s toppling over. I should find a con. It’ll make the next three months easier. Not that I need to worry about that too much. It doesn’t matter how many pros I find, this has an expiration date.

I am resolved.

“Hey to you,” I say softly, then want to kick myself because that tone of voice won’t help me find a negative in him either.

He raises a hand, adjusts an errant strand of my hair that was stuck in the arm of my glasses, and slides the offending lock over my ear. “Are you doing okay?”

“Are you going to keep asking me that for the next three months?”

“I might.”

I stop, rise on my tiptoes, and kiss the corner of his lips. Oops. No luck finding a con there either.

“What’s that for?” he asks.

“Just marking you.”

“You want to pee on me next?”

“I might. Beware,” I say in an over-the-top nefarious tone as we pass the gift shops that edge the small lake, making our way to the Ferris wheel.

“Elise,” he says, his tone letting me know he’s serious.

“Yes?”

“Earlier today, during the ceremony, did you think about . . .?” His voice trails off as the unfinished question hovers like thick smoke.

“It’s hard not to think about Eduardo. But mostly, I thought about how incredibly different this is because we’ve been so open about everything. What about you? Did you think about Emma?”

He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he scrubs a hand over his chin as if in deep thought as we reach the steps of the Ferris wheel. “I don’t know if this makes me sound totally calloused, but I so rarely think about her.” I pump a virtual fist because surely that’s a con, that he doesn’t even think about his first love. “Sometimes it feels like what happened between us was so long ago, it’s like it was another lifetime.”

“And you were a different person?”

He nods as he holds open the gate at the top of the steps for me. “I think I was in some ways.”

The ride attendant says hello and gestures to one of the Ferris wheel cars. We go inside. “What’s the biggest difference between the Christian of today and the twenty-one-year-old you? Besides nine years,” I add, since I bet he’ll go for some sort of age punchline. Could that be a con? Maybe he’s not too serious about anything. Yes, that will definitely keep the chains up high around my heart if he’s simply a shallow fellow.

He wiggles his eyebrows and punches his stomach. “Abs are still chiseled.”

“I knew you were going to say something like that.”

He loops his arm over my shoulders. “But they are. Chiseled.”

I pat his belly. “Yes, and I like them. But I’d like you if your belly was soft.”

“You would?”

I laugh and tap his temple. “I like the upstairs. That’s what entertains me. So entertain me. Tell me something else.”

And yes, there it is. I’ve found it. Christian is entertainment, pure and simple. He’s fun and games. That’s a pro, but in the end, it’ll be a con when he can’t take things seriously. When he can’t take me seriously. And a good con, because it’ll protect me. It’ll keep the lemon gumdrop center of me from melting. Besides, peeling away his layers is wise. The more I know, the less likely I can be taken advantage of again. Knowledge is power.

“Tell me something I wouldn’t recognize about you nine years ago,” I add.

The car cranks loudly, making its first circle as he taps his chin. “I was more wound up then. Like I was turbo-charged and caffeinated.”

I squint, trying to picture a manic Christian. “I can’t see you that way at all.” He has a relaxed ease about him. Perhaps that’s because he’s a true man of leisure. Young retirees can come and go as they please.

“I was like a coiled spring when I was twenty-one. I worked non-stop. I wanted so much. I think the fact that I’d had so little focus in uni for a while changed me. Once I had it, I was filled with the need to do things. To make money, to buy and sell, and keep flipping investments into bigger investments,” he says, as the car whirs higher in the air then stops as more passengers get on below.

“And all that ambition played a part in your marriage not working out?”

He nods. “We didn’t want the same things in life. We didn’t want the same things from the marriage. I suppose that’s similar to what happened to you.”

I scoff. “Safe to say we wanted very different things.”

The car ascends to the top of the wheel, rising in the twilight sky above the top of the other rides. The panorama of the capital city comes into view—palaces and canals, and all the twinkling red, white, and green lights of the park below us.