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Rhys Vaughan had been here.
Hale had told me more than once he’d been trying to get hold of the man, but Vaughan wasn’t answering. It was beginning to tick him off.
But the man had been here.
“He said to give this to you too,” Zoey said.
She was now handing me a cream envelope that, when I took it, I realized was made of expensive cardstock.
I wandered to my office, tossed my laptop bag and purse in a chair and opened the envelope.
Sprawled on the card inside, it said,
The lion is from his father.
He’d want you to give it to him.
Hale will know.
Tell him I’ll talk to him when the time is right.
But now, there’s more work to be done.
-R
I looked at that lion and I knew it had been Hale’s favorite.
And Corey Szabo had kept something that had been important to his son, because in being so, it was important to Corey.
I was curious as all hell what work there was to be done, but that wasn’t for now.
Corey Szabo continuing to find ways to reach out to the ones he loved to share that love was all I could think of now.
I licked my lips and cautiously stepped toward the lion. I reached out and touched it.
“You’re an evil genius,” I whispered to a man who would never hear my voice. “But he needs this, so thank you.”
I set the lion somewhere safe, until Paul took me home later that night.
It was the first time Hale faltered in coming to kiss me when I got off the elevator. And when he made it to me, he didn’t dip his head for my kiss.
He held me and the lion in his arms for a long, long time.
He then told me the story cobbled together from bits and pieces of his memories of when he was very young when his father took him to a fair.
Our bedroom was an awesome, sophisticated, classy study of golds and browns and taupes and bronzes.
So when Hale laid that lion on the built-in unit that ran the length of the room and acted as a way to hide tech equipment and tuck clothing that was out of season, but also as a surface to put kickass décor…
It fit in perfectly.
* * *
Three months later…
“Hello, my wonderful watchers.”
As usual, I was looking right into the camera.
