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He laughed. “That’s entirely your call. But it will make doing something like this again much easier,” he murmured, his smoldering eyes fixed on my lips as he cupped my face in his hands and pulled me to him for a kiss that turned my legs to jelly.

I whimpered when he pulled back, his lips turned up in an impish grin.

“This should be interesting,” Art said, sounding a lot more nervous than his face let on.

“That’s one way to put it.” I laughed as I gently pushed him toward the stairs. “Go tend to your kids. I’ll see you tomorrow. In the meantime, I’ll see if Peggy can scrounge up some sheets for the beds upstairs for us.”

Art took three steps toward the apartment door, then spun around to walk right back to me. Without a word, he wrapped me up in his arms and pulled me close, burying his nose in my hair and breathing deep, before pulling back to press his lips against mine in a kiss that was as tender as it was heartfelt.

The riot in my belly and the shouting in my headfell silent the instant we made contact, leaving only the quiet certainty that I was making the right decision. People would talk in hushed and probably not-so-hushed whispers about how quickly we were moving, insinuating that we were being impulsive and ridiculous, but much the way I knew that I belonged in Banhaven, I knew that nothing that felt this right could possibly be wrong.

TWELVE

I might have just made the mistake of the century.

Kissing him?

What? No! That was… anyway.

What? No! I need details!

Go kiss your own man.

He’s working I’m calling you.

Before I was done reading the text, the phone vibrated in my hand.

“So? What mistake did you make?” Mac asked.

“I said I might have made a mistake. Nuance.”

“Potato, potahto. Spill, sis. I can hear G hollering something from the studio. I have three minutes tops before he comes looking for me.” He sounded more amused than put out about being summoned imperiously, and I tried to picture how Jim would have reacted if I’d tried it.

Shaking my head, I turned back to the conversation at hand. “I asked Art to move in with his kids.”

“What?” The sound of a chair scraping hardwood echoed down the phone line as Mac presumably sat up abruptly. I grinned. It wasn’t often that I was able to surprise my overly astute brother. “You asked the guy you ‘Dear John’ed, who showed up unexpectedly on your doorstep with his offspring all of two days ago, to move in with you? To be clear, this is the man who took you on only one date before you unceremoniously dumped him with no explanation?”

“Well, I might not put it quite like that,” I answered, wincing. “But in a nutshell, yes.”

“Fantastic. Tell me more,” Mac said. I could so easily picture him leaning forward in his chair, elbow on the table and chin propped up on his open palm, eyes gleaming with excitement at the prospect of juicy gossip to share with his friends, that I couldn’t even pretend to be offended.

“I miss you, Mac,” I said, my voice betraying the depth of the longing I felt to be sitting with him sharing a glass of chilled chardonnay instead of talking to him from the other side of the world.

“I miss you too, little sis.”

“I’m not your little sister,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“Five minutes is five minutes, baby,” he replied. And suddenly, the distance didn’t feel so bad. “How do you feel about having them move in? What happened to needing your peace and quiet to find yourself and all that jazz?”

“It’s temporary!” I cried. “Their place flooded. They needed a place to stay for a few weeks, and I have a ton of extra space.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Mac said, his tone implying that it was the complete opposite. “And you’re okay with this?”

“Yes. No. I don’t know,” I answered, glad he couldn’t see the expression on my face.

“That tracks. Aside from the whole ‘moving in with a total stranger who could be a serial killer’ thing, what’s your primary concern? Wet towels on the floor?” Mac asked, as though he couldn’t think of anything worse.

“He’s not a serial killer,” I replied, rolling my eyes.