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“Thanks for giving this back,” I said, closing the book and clutching it to my chest. “I would have been very upset if I’d lost it.”
“I wanted to make my own mark on it before I gave it back to you,” he said.
“Sophie’s just a friend?” I said, eyeing him carefully. “There’s no history there?”
“I have no interest in Sophie,” he said. “She’s too predictable, too polished. I want a woman who picks fights in parking lots with unknown assailants and loves to eat questionable food from even more questionable establishments and makes beautiful pictures of ordinary things.”
“Hmph,” I grumbled.
“And for the record, Ophelia’s sister was turned when she was a child. Ophelia does everything she can to make life more interesting for Georgie, including collecting very rare, very expensive toys. That teddy bear we were transporting was worth more than five hundred thousand dollars at auction. It’s one of a kind. And I only managed to track it down by threatening several of my sources with …” He spared my mother a glance. “A very harsh scolding.”
“A half-million-dollar teddy bear?”
“A very, very rare half-million-dollar teddy bear.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “I hate you guys. I really, really do.”
“Oh, Miranda,” Mom scolded.
“I am sorry,” he said. “I never meant to make you feel foolish. And I know I have been churlish and arrogant and—”
“Pigheaded,” I suggested.
“That seems fair,” he conceded as I stepped toward him.
“Demanding,” I added.
He slipped his hand through my hair, cradling my cheek against his palm. “I’ll accept that.”
“Dickish,” I said.
“I’m not sure that’s a word,” he protested.
“Which would be a problem if we were playing a board game, but since this is supposed to be an apology to me, I’ll say whatever I want. Mmm-kay?”
His lips twitched, even with my mom’s horrified gasp in the background. She never cared much for my way with words. “I can’t say I love you yet, but I know that I want enough time to figure it out. I’ve been alone for so long. And I was unhappy, but I couldn’t figure out why. I didn’t know what I was missing. And then you came stumbling into my life and I saw that it was you. I can live without you, but I don’t want to.” I stood motionless, gaping at him. He grimaced. “Too far?”
I shook my head. “No, that was just about perfect.”
“I do find myself curious—have you finally broken ties with the ‘butt-dialer’?”
“Yes. Decidedly. What exactly are you asking from me?”
“I was thinking that after spending much more time together, we could determine whether you want to spend the rest of your life with me. Whether you feel the way I do. I think I could make you happy … barring natural disasters, mechanical failure, inadvertent public nudity, and pestilence pouring forth from the sky.”
“Not funny, but I accept,” I murmured against his lips as he moved in to kiss me. I could hear my mother sniffling in the background. She was clearly eating this up with a spoon, and who could blame her? This was every suave-ass Cary Grant moment ever filmed, wrapped up in a much hotter package.
“Iris doesn’t accept your resignation, by the way,” he told me. “She said that anyone who can deliver a client safely, on time, with all of the mishaps we suffered and the, er, difficult nature of said client, is definitely someone she wants on the payroll.”
“Even with the damage to the car?”
He shrugged. “She said to think of it as a prototype. Clearly, a built-in GPS system is the first feature she will be ordering in the next model. She would like you to take a few days off to recover, then return to work on Friday, with a pay raise.”
“A raise?” Mom exclaimed.
“Ophelia found my description of our adventures to be highly entertaining. I think Iris is afraid that Ophelia will try to poach you to be her personal driver. Either way, Iris has another assignment for you.”
“I’m almost afraid to ask,” I said.
