"You'd really do that? Walk away from a billion dollars."
"Watch me." I bring her hand up, the one holding the letter, and press my mouth to her knuckles. "The deal of my life isn't in Colorado, Darcy. It's standing right here in front of me."
She looks at me for a long moment, tears and lamplight and that sharp mind of hers working behind her eyes. Her expression carries a playful edge that wakes up everything male in me.
"What time do you fly out in the morning?" she asks quietly.
"Early. First thing."
"Then we have all night." Her voice changes on the last word. Drops.
She sets the letter down on the table, next to the red pen and the quizzes she hasn't finished grading. Then she takes my hand and walks backward, out of the lamplight, drawing me after her into the darkened rows of the library bookshelves.
It takes me three steps to understand where she's taking me.
And why.
My heart survived the letter, the silence after it, and her offer of her whole life. I'm not sure it survives this.
Her eyes stay on mine the whole way, walking backward through a building she knows by heart. Past the biography section. Into the rows, where the lamplight gives out and where a thirteen-year-old with a secret crush used to watch a girl read.
She stops in the shadow between two tall shelves and turns to face me, close enough that I can feel her breath. "Still want to kiss me here in the stacks?"
"What do you think?" I draw her further into my arms, then pivot us so that her back is against the spines of all those books. Framing her face in my palms, I hold her there for a moment, losing myself in the desire, and the love, I see shining in her eyes.
"Kissing you is only the beginning of what I want to do, my beautiful Darcy."
She laughs softly, and I capture the sound with my mouth. A row of old books shifts somewhere above us as her breath goes ragged against my lips and my hands move to caress her breasts. Her hands slide up under my shirt and grip me like a claim, and the last thing I know for certain is that I'm the luckiest idiot alive.
Because Darcy Gable loves me.
CHAPTER 38
DARCY
It turns out I'm an exhibitionist.
Not like that. Mostly not like that. All I know is that it's been three days since Finn found me in the library, three days since we scandalized the stacks, then hurried home to my place to pick up where we left off. Now it's Thursday, and he came straight from the local airfield to my school this afternoon, crossed the faculty parking lot without breaking stride, and kissed me in front of the vice principal, half the marching band out for practice, and at least one member of the school board.
And me, the woman who spent seventeen years perfecting the art of not being looked at, grabbed his jacket with both hands and took her time kissing him right back. A sophomore wolf-whistled. I'm pretty sure Annie and her drama students weren't the only ones applauding. It didn't stop me. I didn't shrink. I didn't blush. When I finally came up for air, I waved at the trombones.
I'm loving Finn out loud now, in public, and it turns out I have a real gift for it. I want him in broad daylight. I want him on Main Street with the whole town scoring us on form. Seventeen years of careful, and this is what was waiting underneath the entire time—a woman who will happily climb her hot-as-hellboyfriend in a public parking lot. My mother raised me better than this. My mother can look away, not that she has. Even she seems elated about Finn and me being together.
As for my brilliant and ballsy man, he won't gloat about Colorado, so I'll do it for him: He flew out Tuesday morning, stood in a room full of men holding a billion dollars, and told them the resort will have to run from Mattichogue or it doesn't run at all. The room said yes. Without Finn there is no resort, and it turns out even a billion dollars knows that for a fact.
He signed the deal on his terms, walked the mountain he's going to build on, then came home to me today. I plan to be insufferable about him for the rest of my life.
Tonight, the celebration. Trivia night at the pub, and the rematch Annie has been demanding since the dethroning. Yes, I made flash cards. Yes, there is a laminated, ranked list of Evan Bardot's weaknesses in my tote bag, starting with the entire eighteenth century.
My team lost one crown on a technicality called BASE jumping. We are not losing two. Even if I've literally been in bed with the enemy ever since our defeat.
"Last chance to forfeit," Finn says at the pub door, holding it open with his shoulder. "We've been training."
"I'm not worried. I've come prepared for battle." I pat his chest on my way past. "Surrender now and I'll let you pick the music round."
"God, I love you," he says to me and the entire street, and follows me in.
Part of me notices that the parking lot is full tonight and so is the street, halfway down the block, on a Thursday. The second thing I notice is the sound inside the pub, which is not the sound of forty people ignoring each other over wings. It's bigger. It's waiting.
