NICKY SUCKED IN as she zipped up the back of her cheerleader costume. Okay, so she couldn’t find their actual high school colors, but at least she could get into the outfit. Turned out a regimen of regular sexual play was pretty helpful in keeping trim, despite all the pistachio sundaes she’d eaten in a year of dating Jim.
And tonight, in honor of their anniversary, she was going to give him his favorite fantasy. Apparently Jimmy still harbored fond memories of her as a cheerleader and him as the high school geek who finally gets the girl. She hadn’t actually been a cheerleader, but this was his fantasy, so she played along. Especially since she didn’t mind reliving the good parts of being a teenager, not to mention the real-life discovery that geeks make great lovers. Hence the new, easy strip-off cheerleader uniform.
Besides, she was also warming him up for her announcement. She’d decided to change up her life even more. Upper management was great, but she was still in plastics. She wanted something different, a new challenge in a field she really enjoyed. Given the strides she’d taken in her confidence, she now felt strong enough—without fear enough—to take the risk and send out résumés. But first she had to crown her decision, so to speak, with a fantasy night.
Twenty minutes later, she was pulling into his driveway, pleased to see the lights on in his house. He’d just come back from a business trip to New York, where he was selling yet another brilliant engineering idea. Something about redesigning a water processing device that cut the cost of filtration by forty-three percent. She didn’t know anything about engineering—or water filtration, for that matter—but she was pretty sure she could figure out the business incentive to buy his idea.
She ran up to the door and rang the bell, her heart already beating fast. She had a key, but it was way more fun to start in character from the beginning. She’d even tied her hair back in a ponytail just so she could bounce it a bit when she spoke.
The door opened and she was speaking before she really took in the sight of him.
“Hi there, is Jimmy home? I’ve got a problem with calculus before…” Her voice trailed away as she looked at him. His hair was mussed, his eyes had bags and he was wearing ripped jeans and a greasy tee. “Um…wow. Problem in New York?”
“What?” He rubbed his hand over his face. “Wow, Nicky. Nice outfit.”
She put on her most vacant expression, complete with a ponytail flip. “Whatever do you mean, Jimmy?”
He grinned, grabbed her by the ponytail and hauled her inside. It was awkward. She stumbled a bit over his front door, but he caught her. Then he pressed her hard and fast against the wall. Their kiss went from zero to infinite in less than a second, and she let herself arch into his groin. Thin cheerleader panties allowed for so much interesting friction against jeans.
A half hour later, she was naked and stretched halfway up the staircase. He had collapsed beside her, one hand still toying with her ponytail.
“I swear,” he murmured into her hair, “next time we’ll make it up to the bedroom.”
“I’m not complaining,” she answered as she pressed a kiss into his chest. She wanted to do a little more, but she was still very aware of how tired he seemed. Which probably meant bad news. “So what happened in New York?”
“Hmmm?”
“New York,” she said as she shifted to look up in his face. “But we don’t have to talk about it, if you don’t want to. I’m here for you whatever you need.” She couldn’t resist wiggling her hips just a little bit. “However you need.”
He groaned in reaction and pulled her in for a kiss that didn’t go deep enough. “I am so freaking lucky to have you in my life,” he said when they separated. “Thank you.”
She lifted herself on one elbow. “Don’t you have that backward? Shall we recap a bit of the changes in the past year? When we first…um…hooked up last year, I was a middle manager having a nervous breakdown. I worked all the time, had alienated all my friends and was working on completely disconnecting from my family when, wham, in comes the Magic Man.”
“No pun intended,” he drawled.
She blinked, momentarily thrown. “Oh. Comes. Haha. But shut up, I’m on a roll here.”
He dutifully pressed his lips together.
“You magically removed my phone, gave me amazing sex and forced me step by step into a life. A real life.”
He shook his head. “You made the changes, Nicky. You would have done that without me.”
“Or crashed because I was e-mailing while driving and died horribly.” She straightened enough to flick him with her ponytail for speaking when he was supposed to be quiet. “So now, one year later, I’m upper management at much bigger salary while working less hours. Yes, I got the promotion because of my brilliant reorganization that saved a ton of jobs, but without you, I would have buried myself in the promotion, too. But I didn’t and now I go to movies, have hot fantasy sex and discovered I like rock climbing. I’m even a godmother to a beautiful little niece, and thank you for smoothing things over with Susan.”
She touched his face, trying to impress on him how integral he was to her life. “I couldn’t have done any of it without you. I feel like a whole person because of you. I love you.”
His expression remained playful, but his eyes were serious. He understood what she was saying. “Let’s not forget who I was Before Nicky. I was just as much a workaholic as you, but without any focus or drive. I was locked in this garage creating magic illusions and playing Magic Man whenever my brother had a hole in the Thursday night lineup.”
“I like the Magic Man!”
“But he isn’t an engineer. If I didn’t have the example of your drive, I would never have thought of my new water filtration design.”
“You would have gotten to it eventually.”
He shook his head. “I don’t think so. You have such focus, Nicky. It inspires me.” He waggled his eyebrows. “In more than one way.”
“Love that inspiration,” she drawled. Then she touched his chest lightly. “So what happened in New York?”
“Oh. Yeah. They bought my design. And for a ton of money.”
She brightened. That was the exact opposite of what she’d expected. “But that’s wonderful!”
“Except there’s a catch. I’ve been up all night working out the details. That’s why I wasn’t ready when you showed up.”
She frowned. “A big catch?”
He nodded. “Yeah, they want me to run their R & D department. In New York.”
Her heart crashed. Her whole body crashed, but her mouth apparently still worked. “New York?”
“Yeah. It’s a great opportunity. They’re working on projects that…” His words spun on, outlining everything he would get to do, the people he would work with. And when he slowed to take a breath, she pressed a kiss to his lips, though her heart was breaking. “It’s time for me to start working with people again. In an R & D department. There’s so much more inspiration when it’s not just me.”
“So you’re moving to New York.”
“Not yet, I’m not. I told them I had to think about it. It’s a big change.”
“But do you want the job?” she asked, even though she could already tell the answer. He was practically vibrating with excitement. She couldn’t take that away from him, even though he would be leaving her. And she would again be stuck alone with a not-so-fulfilling job of her own.
“Yes,” he said softly as he lifted her chin. “Yes, I do, but I told them I’d have to ask my wife first.”
She blinked. The tears were making her vision fuzzy and apparently clogging her ears. Had he just said wife? “You’re married?”
He laughed and pressed a kiss to her mouth. “Not yet, I’m not.” Then he reached down through the railing to pick up his discarded jeans. Pulling a jeweler’s box out of his pocket, he got down on one knee before her. As they were still on the stairs and were both naked, it was an odd sight, but she didn’t care. He was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
“Nicky Taylor, will you do me the greatest honor and marry me?”
She swallowed. “Are you…um…are you proposing because you want me to go to New York with you?”
“I’m proposing because I love you, Nicky. I always have. But this past year has been incredible in so many ways. If you want to stay here in Chicago, then I’ll stay. If you want to work in Paraguay, I think I’d go just to be with you. But I’m hoping you want to go to New York with me. There are a ton of corporate jobs there. You’d be snatched up in—”
“Yes! Yes yes yes yes yes!” She threw her arms around him and nearly toppled them off the stairs. He stabilized them with one arm on the railing. That was perfect because it gave her the opening to kiss him as deeply as she wanted. And she definitely wanted.
He slowed her down after a moment, pulling back enough so he could slip the ring on her finger. She stared at it a moment, then lifted her gaze to his. “I want to go to New York, Jimmy. I was going to tell you that I’ve decided to quit my job anyway. It’s time to shake things up, to try something new.”
“Take all the time you want to find something new. My salary will more than cover what we need.”
“I love you, Jimmy.”
He straightened, excitement and desire alive in his face. She knew because she felt it, as well. Alive and happy and so excited about the future that she could barely breathe.
“I love you, too, Nicky.”
“But I have one requirement,” she said sternly. “The Magic Man and his toys come, too.”
He arched his brows and she could already see his mind working. “You want me to hypnotize you again? Shall I put a spell on you?”
She laughed. He didn’t know that he’d gotten hold of her a long, long time ago? And in all the best ways possible. “Nah,” she drawled as she reached down and gripped him. “I want you to teach me how to control you.”
“Sweetheart,” he groaned. “You learned that a long time ago.”
This time they made it to the bedroom. And the garage. And all the way—eventually—to New York and a very wonderful life.