Page 122 of Ghost Note

“Yeah, okay. I’ll come to you.”

Danny sounded like he gasped before something near him got knocked over, only for him to curse and quickly fumble around before he came back to the phone. “Did you just say you’ll come? To me? As in… leave Hope Cove? Come on tour? As in…”

I laughed again, delirious with exhaustion, and dizzy on love. “Yeah. I said I’ll come to you, but—”

“Fuck! Fuck! Zee. Fuck!Are you serious? Holy fucking shit. I don’t believe this. I never thought you’d say yes. Never in a million… hold on a minute. You just saidbut, didn’t you? What’s the but for? Don’t break my heart here, Zee, please, I’m begging you. It’s pounding so fucking fast.”

“I’ve spent time thinking about things, and I want to be brave. I want to do something nobody, not even myself, thinks I can do.But…”

“Christ—”

“I want to do it right. So, I’m going to need some time.”

“What kind of time?”

“However long it takes.”

“To do what, exactly?”

“Oh, I don’t know. To get my life in order. Some guy I know just left me two houses and a shop that I apparently need to agree to taking.”

He blew out a stream of air, his relief washing through the phone. “Don’t forget the Scirocco.”

“What?” My eyes flew open, and I stared up at the ceiling.

“You haven’t seen? I left it next to your garage around the back of the house. I figured your blue and my white had spent too many years apart. They looked cute together. I couldn’t bring myself to tear them apart.”

Pushing the duvet off me, I ran to the window and yanked the curtains apart, only to squint over at the garages. Danny’s pride and joy was parked there like it was exactly where it needed to be.

“That car means everything to you, you idiot. You can’t just—”

“I can do anything I damn well want, and what I want is to entwine our worlds so fucking much that, in the end, it’ll be impossible to tear us apart. I want us to have two homes. One on the road, and one in Hope Cove to go back to.”

My shoulders deflated, yet my heart swelled, and I pressed my palm against the heavy beat of it as I studied his bright, white car in the middle of the night, where the sky was already beginning to turn a lighter shade of grey before the glorious yellow sun rose to introduce a new day.

“Zee?”

“Yeah, Danny?”

“One day I’m going to marry you, too. You know that, don’t you?”

With a smile I couldn’t control, I whispered in return, “Yeah, Danny. I know.”

“Good.” He sighed, and it sounded like he’d sunk down onto a chair or a sofa or a bed when he groaned, low and sexy. “Now, sing for me like only you can, and let me get off to the sound of that voice.”

I did.

I got off to the sound of him getting off to me, too, before we fell asleep on the phone together.

Just two idiots who didn’t believe in the old adage, once bitten, twice shy.

The caution had gone, and I was ready to be bitten again, especially if it was his teeth sinking into my masochistic heart.

Forty-Two

“You can stop looking at me like that any time you feel like it,” I said, lifting my fork to my mouth and wrapping it around the lobster ravioli with a pop. It was only 11:00 a.m., but I was ravenous, and my favourite restaurant asked no questions when I ordered my favourite dish for breakfast… as well as a large glass of wine. I needed that to fuel my courage.

Ben brought his elbows to the table and clasped his hands together as he studied me. “I can’t believe you’re actually going to do this.”

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