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I wanted to ask her what Hugh had said to her, but I didn’t want to ruin anything.So instead, we walked in silence, and then I led her up the stairs to the command floor.Rane stood off to the side, watching us, and nodded to me.
We started down the hallway toward one of the smaller conference rooms, and I paused outside the last one and turned to her.
She raised a brow.“Are we going to work?”
I laughed.“No, I wish it could be more special, but this is the best that I could do under the circumstances.”
She grinned.“Thank you, Zander.”
“Don’t thank me yet.You haven’t seen what I have in store for you.”
She laughed.“What are we waiting for?”
I inhaled deeply and then exhaled before I opened the door.I put my hand to Kristin’s lower back and led her into the dark room.Once we were inside, I nodded to Isaac, and he closed the door.
“Why is it pitch-black in here?”she asked.
“Just wait.”
A moment later, lights came on in the room, but it wasn’t from a lamp.It was from a star machine that someone had found for me.Around the walls of the room was the galaxy, and she gasped and squeezed my arm.“Jules—”
She winced slightly.“It’s okay.You can call me Julian if you want.”
She turned to me, taking my hands in hers as the stars drifted around us.“I appreciate that, but you are Zander.This took me by surprise.”
“Do you remember what you said to me that first night we were together, back when I was Julian?”
She lifted her face to the ceiling and smiled.“Yes.I said your eyes were like the stars above.”She dropped her chin, staring into my eyes.“They still are.”
I couldn’t help myself.I pulled her into my arms and kissed her tenderly.I made sure to keep the kiss from becoming all-consuming, and then I said, “Here, let’s sit down.”
I’d had the table and chairs removed.Pillows were all over the center of the room.Along with her favorite bottle of Firefly vodka, which was hard as hell to find in regular times, but I had learned from Rane that she had stocked some here for her private collection.
We sat down, and I poured her a drink.For a moment, we sat there staring at the stars.
“This is beautiful.”
“This isn’t all.There is more.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yep,” I told her and then reached out to Rane.“Okay, you can start it now.”
A moment later, the television screens came to life in front of us, and there were pictures of pieces of our lives.It had taken a while to find some of them.I had searched hard to locate photographs of our old house, her Challenger, and people we had known through the years.Luckily, many were found in archived files Alex created many years ago to record our history.
Kristin gasped beside me as the pictures began, and she stared at the virtual screen wall, her eyes misting over as she watched the pictures come and go in a kaleidoscope of images.“Zander, this is incredible.How did you do this?”
“I dug through archives and did some serious internet searches.”
She laughed as a picture of her back in the seventies came up on the screen, followed by one of us with Anastasia.She sobbed slightly, and the two of us settled back against the pillows and watched the show.It lasted about fifteen minutes, and occasionally we would talk about the pictures, but we were quiet for the majority of the time.She clung to my hand, and I saw tears slip down her cheeks as memories filled her mind.
When it was over, she turned to me.“Thank you.That was the most incredible thing anyone has ever done for me.”
I brushed my hand over her cheek, wiping away her salty tears.“You deserve incredible, Kris.I want to give you incredible for the rest of our lives.”
She hesitated, and I waited to see what she would say.Finally, in a barely audible soft voice, she replied, “I want that too.”
I curled my hand around her neck and brought her face to mine.The kiss was tender and slow, both of us taking our time and enjoying the sensual touches we shared.I rolled her to her back, leaning over her and making sure not to press on her stomach.
