Page 154 of A Matter of Time

“No.”

“No?”

“Boss—”

“Dane,” he corrected me.

“Oh, yeah.” I nodded to myself. I was a bit out of it. “Sorry.”

“Jory, I want you here.”

“But I’m on my way home.”

“No.” He took a breath. “Get here now.”

“It was crazy before. You should’ve seen the guns and⁠—”

“Was it?” he said flatly. “Crazy?”

“Yeah.” I sighed because I was crashing, the adrenaline just draining from my body, and his voice on the other end of the line sounded like home for some reason. I was delirious.

“Listen, Jory,” he said, letting out a deep breath, “I need to talk to you about something, so you must come see me. Don’t make me wait.”

I turned my phone all the way off so Sam couldn’t find me, and changed my directions to the driver. I wondered vaguely when my life was going to even out. Any time now would be good.

I went to meet Dane at the Valentine Lounge with my duffel in hand. It was a very chic cocktail lounge that played mostly bossa nova, very martini-with-an-olive kind of place. I left my bag with the hostess.

I had been there once before on a date with Rafael Soto. He liked to dress me up and take me out, show me off and then drive me home. After the third date when he wouldn’t even touch me because he didn’t want me to wrinkle, I told him to get lost. What I had found charming and slow-moving had actually been run-of-the-mill crazy. But I knew where the lounge was because of it, so everything did in fact always happen for a reason. Sometimes it took a long time to figure out the why.

Dane was sitting almost in the middle of the place on a couch surrounded by people. They were his friends, but there were two women I didn’t know, one on either side of him. When he saw me, he made the gesture with his hand for me to hurry, and I moved as fast as I could. I felt stupid standing there with my hands shoved into the pockets of my jeans, looking kind of out of it, I was sure. He stood and grabbed a handful of the front of my shirt and tugged me forward into his arms. I went stiff because he never hugged me, but the hand in my hair holding me against him, the other rubbing circles on my back was too much. I shivered hard and wrapped my arms around his waist. He gave me a last hard squeeze and pushed me out to look me over.

“Dane?” one of the women asked. “Who’s⁠—”

“That’s his brother, Jory,” Jude offered, and I turned to look at him. He smiled and nodded, and I looked up into Dane’s eyes.

“This is what we’re going to talk about,” he said gruffly, hand on the back of my neck as he led me a few feet away from the others. When he turned, both hands went to my shoulders. “I was going to have a long talk with you in the office, but for one, you might not make it to Monday at the rate you’re going, so I have to step in now, and two, there’s no formality between us anymore, so I might as well tell you my plan here at the lounge.”

I was silent, waiting.

“Jory, we’re going to change your last name from Keyes to Harcourt. I’m going to make you the beneficiary of my estate, and you’re going to have access to a lot of things you don’t have now.”

I was silent, and he just stared into my eyes. “What?” I said finally.

“I’m not adopting you. I’m not taking care of you. You still have to work and make your own way and everything else, but you don’t need the last name Keyes, and you don’t need to say no to me.”

“I can’t live with you or off of you or⁠—”

“Who’s asking you to? I wouldn’t live with you on a bet,” he snapped at me. “You’d be dead in a week because I’d throw you off the balcony of my place.”

“But—”

“And, by the way, you’re fired.”

I was stunned as I stared up at him.

“Your eyes are huge,” he said with a grin.

“You can’t fire me.”