Trying to be lighthearted, she said, “Bet you won’t feel the same way once the boxes of tampons are under your bathroom sink.” She cursed herself for being such an idiot. He’s not going to think tampons are cute and funny. Way to remind him that you’re ruining his perfect bachelor life.

He laughed and made the appropriate face. “It’s either that or babies, right?” he said with a straight face, but when Lily’s mouth dropped open he hugged her again, and said, “You should have seen the look on your face,” laughing at his joke. In a loud voice he declared, “Bring on the tampons. I’m man enough.”

Travis lifted their bags from the trunk. Lily threw her purse over her shoulder and followed him to the front door. A large pile of mail sat on the floor to the right.

A pink-and-red envelope caught her eye. Lily’s fingers tingled with the urge to rip it open. It was no surprise to her that women wrote Travis love letters. Frankly, she would have been more surprised if they didn’t. Women had always chased Travis: At least she hadn’t been alone in her obsession. She stared at the poisonous letter on the floor, her imagination hurling images at her of naked photos, lightly perfumed, slipped in between expensive sheets of stationery that declared true love and endless sex. The women who wrote these letters were beautiful women with perfect figures. Twenty-one, probably, and barely legal enough to be sipping a chilled glass of white wine in between rumpled bedsheets.

Maybe he could turn a blind eye to these love notes if the way he said he felt about her was real, she thought with a smidgeon of hope. But after ten or twenty naked pictures floating into his mailbox from the postman, wouldn’t he realize that he was missing out on all of that young, decadent flesh? Wouldn’t he long to touch round, firm br**sts and kiss pink, pouting lips?

Travis dropped their bags in the foyer and bent down to pick up the pile of mail. He grabbed the pink envelope and Lily’s heart fell to the floor. He turned to her with a smile. “Looks like Janet had her baby.”

Lily stuttered with surprised. “That’s a birth announcement?” Her voice was breathless and shaky.

Travis raised an eyebrow. “What did you think it was?” Lily turned red with shame at her awful assumptions, and Travis chuckled. “A love letter?”

Lily shook her head too fast in denial and felt so dizzy that she leaned against the oak table near the door to steady herself.

Travis dropped the mail as he reached out for her. “You’re exhausted, aren’t you?” he asked, the concern in his sea-green eyes making her feel like a traitor.

“A little,” she said in a small voice.

His arm warm around her, he led Lily into his living room and got her settled on the couch by the window. “Why don’t you relax here while I unpack, then I’ll rustle us up something to eat?” He lowered his voice to a sensual pitch. “And then, if you’re feeling better, we can officially have our wedding night.”

The beautiful ring he’d given her felt heavy and cold on her finger until Travis kissed her lightly once, then twice, the third time slipping his sweet tongue into her mouth. Lily responded instinctively, and when his forearms brushed against her br**sts she gasped at the sensation.

“Hopefully that’ll give you something to look forward to.”

When he’d taken the bags into the bedroom she held her hand up to the light. The huge sapphire sparkled wildly, casting colored shadows on the walls.

Lily couldn’t hide from the feeling that she didn’t deserve to be wearing the exquisite ring. What about her was good enough to win Travis’s love? She wasn’t pretty enough, wasn’t charismatic enough, she wasn’t even a dy***ite businessperson, no matter how well he seemed to think she had done in selecting furnishings for his client.

But Lily’s fears went even deeper than her usual insecurities about her looks. When would Travis see that there was a big difference between falling in love with someone during a wild trip to Italy and actually living with that person in the real world?

Lily sighed and curled up into a ball on the couch. She knew it was her old lack of confidence rearing its ugly head again, but even though she knew what the problem was, it didn’t mean she knew how to fix it.

The only she knew for sure was that when Travis took her to bed that night, she was going to knock his socks off. Maybe the amazing sex they shared would keep Travis by her side, at least for a little while.

Travis had been plagued with the nagging sense that something wasn’t quite right with Lily all day, but her response to his kiss on the couch banished his worries. She was likely tired, and he couldn’t wait to get into bed with her again. They hadn’t made love since the morning of the festival. Making love to Lily ranked number one on his list of the most satisfying things he had ever done, and he looked forward to a lifetime of as much wild sex as they could fit in.

Starting with tonight.

He called for some Chinese food to be delivered, then dumped the contents of their bags into the hampers in his laundry room. Maria, his cleaning lady, would be in the next morning, and she would take care of their clothes.

Heading back into the kitchen, he pulled a bottle of Chardonnay out of the fridge and uncorked it in one smooth motion. He poured two glasses and handed one to Lily who had risen from the couch and was leaning on his steel-topped kitchen island.

Seeing her in his environment, soft and round against the sharp, flat metals and plate-glass windows, he felt bad about assuming she’d live with him until they found another home. Taking a sip of wine he said, “I never realized what a bachelor’s pad this really is.”

Lily’s eyes widened in surprised. He leaned against the other side of the island, and said, “Cheers” as he lightly bumped his glass into hers.

“Cheers,” she repeated, but she didn’t drink. Instead she said, “It’s a wonderful space, Travis. So full of light.”

Travis was warmed by her compliment, yet he couldn’t miss what she didn’t say. He prompted her,

“But?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, okay, but your loft is a little sparse.”

Travis choked on his sip of wine. “Sparse?” he said. “That’s quite a politically correct way of putting it,”

he said with a laugh. “I can see that you’re going to be great with clients.”

Lily blushed at his compliment. “Thank you,” she said, her words tinged with a measure of surprise.