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“Daddyyyyy!” the little girl said, the Y bouncing with every footfall as she ran. “Frow me in the pool!”
He scooped her up, and without missing a beat, he took two steps, said, “Like this?” before chucking her, squealing, into the pool and diving in behind her.
I closed the lid to the smoker and headed back toward Jo, thinking about just how right he was. About how this town cast a spell that had woven its way around my heart.
But I knew the second I had the thought that it wasn’t the town.
It was her.
She’d possessed me, claiming I was the snake charmer when it was her all along. The town, the people, the way I felt here … they were nothing without her.
For a moment, I let myself imagine what it would be like to stay. Most of my job was spent on the road, so I could do it from anywhere and fly back to DC when I needed to. I could find a place, a quiet place here in town. Go to dances every Saturday night and spin Jo around the dance floor. Spend my nights with her. Spend my days with her.
I could be happy here. I could make a home here.
Home. I’d been searching for that my whole life, building what I could from what I had at my disposal. Like a pigeon trying to make a nest out of take-out boxes and discarded straws. But here waited riches to build a life that meant something. That meant everything.
The feeling was so strong, I had to school myself so I didn’t hurry back over to her, so I didn’t say too much, so when I kissed her, it was brief and gentle, without the desire I wanted to claim her with.
Could I have this life? Would she want me here with her? Or was it easy to daydream and make promises, knowing I was leaving?
I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I wanted to find out. If it was just a fantasy, I could keep it in my heart in the dark. I could keep the daydream without the tarnish of rejection.
I’ll be your somebody.
I hadn’t realized I’d needed one until then.
And now I didn’t know if I could do without one.
Without her.
23
The Truth in the Two Step
JO
Grant spun me around the dance floor so fast, I hung onto him for fear I’d fly away. But his arm around my waist, holding me flush against him, would never have let me go.
It was too beautiful tonight, too good. Too happy for words.
We’d sold out of tickets, thanks to Sebastian’s connections. Half the crowd consisted of the top one percent of Lindenbach, and everyone had donated something over the price of their plates. The silent auction had been a wild success, earning us double what we’d thought.
But the real money had been in donations, and boy, had the donors shown up in a big way. At this stage of the night, we’d raised almost three million dollars. The two biggest were anonymous and totaled at a million each.
The thing about anonymous donations was that the person who accepted the donation knew, and if their names were on a check, even more knew.
Grant had given his check to Daisy and swore her to secrecy.
Merrick handed his to my mother directly.
My shock at the money was tempered by disbelief. It was an unfathomable amount, and each of those men wrote a check for it. Like, cash. I knew they were rich of course, but seeing an actual check for a million dollars was not something I believed I would ever see in my life. And certainly not from the man I was sleeping with.
I hated that his good and honest deed was made bitter by his father’s check, which I couldn’t believe was anything but a bunch of strings. Where Grant had gone to lengths to hide it from me—even now, he didn’t know I knew—Merrick had given it straight to Mama. And judging by her reaction, I figured she was getting ready to say yes to the dress.
Nothing Merrick did sat right. But I wasn’t turning my nose up at a cool mil from the devil. I just figured we’d better get down to the bank first thing and get that sucker cashed before he got wise.
Grant smiled down at me, dapper as all hell in a suit black as midnight. He smelled like the million bucks he’d given us, his smile so bright, so happy. Never would I have guessed that the man I’d met just a few short weeks ago could have transformed like he had. The man in this suit wasn’t the man in the suit I’d ruined with egg yolk. He was something else entirely.
I’d spent the past few weeks pretending like the future wasn’t a thing. That Grant leaving was nothing more than a bullet point on a calendar. That when he left, things would just go back to normal. I wouldn’t miss him at all in that scenario.
