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Indy:Plan B, then. What if you planned a family thing and everyone had to be there? He couldn’t back out then, right? And when I show up, it’ll be a chance encounter.
Ethan:I don’t want to involve my family. They’re not happy about what happened with Amber, and I haven’t told them about the money.
Ethan:There’s a café he takes prospective clients to. It’s on the corner of 4th and W. Park. Always orders the eggs benedict. Camp out for a few days, and you’ll get your encounter.
Indy:What about you?
Ethan:I don’t like eggs.
Indy:How are you going to get your money back? What do you mean you don’t like eggs? What do you eat for breakfast?
Ethan:I don’t like the texture. There are lots of other breakfast foods.
Indy:You missed one.
* * *
Indy:Can’t rate the eggs, but their milkshakes are amazing.
Ethan:Please tell me you had a proper breakfast.
Indy smiled around her straw, typing with one hand. She really had to bring Sasha here.
Indy:No comment.
When Ethan didn’t respond, she expected that to be it. But twenty minutes later, there he was, khakis and a navy shirt, standing before her.
“Ethan? What are you doing here?”
“Saving you from a sugar overload. Come on.”
Indy looked up— and up— and flushed at Ethan’s soft smile.
He crooked two fingers. “You can take me somewhere.”
Indy gathered her things. There was no doubt in her mind that Ethan was a good teacher. He had a casual control of authority that made it easy to follow him.
“Where?” she asked when they were outside.
“Anywhere you like,” he said. “Show me your favorite place in the city.”
Well, that was easy.
Barely a block later, Indy led Ethan into Rabble Books. The shelves stretched all the way to the ceiling, far beyond the human reach. Indy didn’t plan to buy anything. All she needed was the smell of paper and prose, and she’d be happy.
The spines varied from crisp and unblemished to well loved. Indy ran her fingers along the cracks, imagining where they’d come from, the hands that had loved and re-loved them before.
“I should have guessed,” he said softly.
Indy held back the urge to tackle him into a hug for instinctively knowing to be hushed while inside.
“So this is where I can find you when you’re not writing or spying, huh?”
“Pretty much. I also like to walk around the park near my apartment when I need to work a plot hole out, or when Sasha thinks I’m getting vampirically pale.”
“Vampires are pretty sexy, though.”
Indy smiled. He never gave up. “Now that you know where my favorite place is, where is yours?”
