Page 115 of The Main Event

There was a lime green scarf tied around her neck and she’d put on a purple headband. Her hair looked a little redder than normal, suggesting she’d put on a rinse, and her makeup was bright but not overpowering.

I forgot to breathe. Standing there in her Daphne Blake costume, she was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

Levi being Levi, he recognized that I’d become lost in the moment, and he reached over the bar to thump my back. “Take a breath, dude.”

I greedily sucked in oxygen, and then let it out again.

“I know that you had inside information on what costume to wear, but it says a lot that you bothered to go all out for her,” Levi said in a low voice. “Youarethe guy I want for her, just for the record.”

The naked emotion on his face threw me. “Thank you, Levi.” I swallowed around the lump that had appeared in my throat. “That means a great deal coming from you.”

“If you hurt her, I’ll crush you into a million pieces.”

“I won’t hurt her.” I meant it more than I’d ever meant anything else. “I just want to make her happy.”

“Yeah. That explains the costume.” He leaned close. “You look like a doofus.”

“Thanks.” I shook my head and turned back to Daisy. She’d finally seen me and was staring back in open-mouthed wonder.

“How did you know?” she demanded as she hurried over.

I could’ve lied and pretended I’d just divined the costume out of thin air, but I didn’t want lies between us. I didn’t want anything between us. “Jesse might’ve let it slip.” I was rueful. “Are you angry or happy? I can’t tell.”

“I’m incredibly turned on.”

That was not the response I was expecting. “So … Fred does it for you, huh?”

“Oh, Fred is a complete and total moron. The fact that you dressed up for me does it for me.”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.” I pulled her close and leaned in for a kiss.

“You’ll get my lipstick on you,” she warned.

“I don’t care.”

“The others will see.”

“I definitely don’t care about that.” When my lips touched hers, all was right in the world. This was where I was supposed to be. This was the woman I was supposed to be with. This was the life I was supposed to be leading.

I was so lost in the kiss that the outside world ceased to exist. It was just like when we’d kissed for the first time, only better, because all the emotions I’d been trying to tamp down in that moment had been released.

This is real.

This is right.

Then I heard someone clear a throat behind us and I was forced to pull back. Daisy’s eyes were a little glazed, suggesting she’d been feeling the same emotions as me. I wanted to keep that glazed look on her face for the foreseeable future. That wasn’t possible given what we had to do tonight.

“I think we’ve garnered an audience,” I said on a laugh.

“Apparently so.” Her giggle was music to my ears.

As I turned to see who had dared interrupt the moment, I smiled. That expression disappeared in an instant, however, because the person who had cleared his throat was my father.

Everything I’d been feeling disappeared in an instant, and I was left in a barren wasteland of emotions. “Dad,” I said on a rasp.

He was dressed in a costume. Well, for him. He had a top hat and one of those masks on a stick you lift to cover your face. It was something that belonged at a society ball, not a Salem Halloween party. My father wouldn’t have understood the difference, though.

Surprisingly—maybe not to the others but to me—he had my mother on his arm. She was dressed in a beaded gown and was carrying a similar mask.

---