Page 611 of Flirting with Darkness

Her voice grew significantly more pointed.

“Although I’m with Rachel at this point,” she added. “What the hell aren’t you telling me? You haven’t been this weird… well, in a hell of a long time. Were you gone longer than I realize? Is that why your hair is so long? Why your accent is so strong?”

Frowning faintly as she appeared to be trying to answer her own question, she studied his eyes.

“You saw him. Didn’t you? Your father.”

Ghost hesitated.

After the faintest pause, he nodded.

“Yes.”

Worry bloomed in her eyes.

“Why, Laz?”

“It’s a long story,” he said truthfully. “A very long story.”

She bit her lip, still staring at his face. “Okay,” she said, exhaling. “But there’s no way he could have followed you here? You didn’t get close enough to bring him back with you?”

Ghost frowned, thinking about that.

Truthfully, the thought hadn’t occurred to him.

His wife must know more about his father’s capabilities than he did.

Did more than one of the clocks exist?

Or had the Count found some other way to jump through time?

“I don’t know,” he admitted finally.

Her fingers traced his jaw and he looked up.

Staring into those blue eyes, he got briefly lost.

She was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

He doubted suddenly whether she was real.

Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe he really had died.

“What?” she asked, nudging him. “What does that look mean?”

Unthinkingly, he told her the truth that time, too.

“I was thinking I have never wanted anyone so badly in my life,” he told her. “I can scarcely look at you. I was wondering if you were real… if I invented you. You cannot possibly be my wife.”

He confessed it without thought, without guile.

She smiled at him in surprise.

A startled, touched expression reached her blue eyes when he didn’t go on, or try to retract any part of what he said. He could see the genuine emotion that rose there. He could see the emotion catch in her throat, maybe even in her heart.

He felt it as real, even before she kissed him tenderly on the mouth.

She wrapped her tanned, lean arms more tightly around his neck.

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