Page 47 of A Minute Past Midnight

I stared out the window of the private plane as the endless blue sky stretched beyond the clouds, trying to ignore the crazy shit my heart had been doing lately whenever Samir looked at me.

It was becoming a problem, a very serious problem, because I had never been the woman who believed life could become good in the blink of an eye.

Not for me.

I believed in working for what you wanted. I believed in protecting yourself. I believed in disappointment arriving eventually, no matter how beautiful things seemed beforehand.

Then there was Samir.

Attentive, caring, overly generous, and so damn fine and bossy.

I honestly couldn't believe he chose me—the small-town girl from Tennessee who thought love came in the form of living off my parents' expectations of me.

Beneath all of Samir's intensity and confidence, he was unbelievably funny and had become everything I never realized I’d been missing.

“Baby.”

I turned my head toward him.

He sat beside me, dressed comfortably in a fitted shirt and dark jeans, looking entirely too good for a man who had been bothering me for the last twenty minutes.

“Yes?”

“You hungry?”

I narrowed my eyes. “You asked me that fifteen minutes ago.”

“And?”

“And I said no.”

He nodded slowly before reaching over and rubbing his large hand over the curve of my stomach. My heart immediately softened. That was something else he had started doing constantly. Ever since my belly had begun showing more noticeably, Samir touched it like he was still trying to convince himself there was actually a baby growing inside me.

His baby.

Our baby.

“Maybe the baby is hungry,” he said.

I laughed. “You don’t even know if the baby is hungry.”

“I know my baby.” He winked.

Charming ass.

“Our baby isn’t even born yet.”

“Exactly. I’m getting familiar early.”

I shook my head, smiling. “You are ridiculous.”

“And you love it.”

I looked away. The smile on my face probably gave me away, because the truth was . . . I did.

I loved his ridiculousness. I loved waking up to him checking on me. I loved how he remembered things I’d casually forget. I loved the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn’t paying attention, and maybe that was what scared me most. Because every day, I felt myself falling deeper.

“Happy birthday, love,” he said, kissing the back of my hand.