And the way I blew in my pants when she did.
“What you going to do? She’s from England, right?”
I tighten my grip around the glass.
“She’s leaving once I get back to New York.” I knock back the rest of the bourbon in one go, hissing as it burns a trail down to my stomach.
Clay studies me, before he looks out over the ocean.
“You’d rather she stays?”
“I’d rather she was my wife.”
His brows shoot up.
“Hallie’s…” I run a hand around my jaw. “She’s everything I lost faith in.”
There’s a peal of laughter from inside the house and Clay looks back toward the door with a grin.
“You’re a lucky man. Beautiful family… grandkids,” I muse as I listen to the sounds of life coming from inside.
“Molly will have company one day. Give Sullivan and Sinclair some time.”
“Perhaps.”
I run my thumb around the rim of my empty glass. Molly’s my only grandchild. A shining little ball of sunshine. Her mother’s long gone. How anyone could leave a little girl like that I’ll never understand. She’s pure innocence and love. Molly and her little baby dolls she takes everywhere.
The memory of Hallie talking so animatedly with her as she pretended to feed Molly’s doll grabs me around the heart and squeezes. It’s the moment I knew,really knew, that I never wanted Hallie to leave. Ever. That if I could have slid a ring on her finger there and then, I would have. And if I could have put our own baby in her belly that night in my office, then I would have done so without hesitation.
I could keep getting her pregnant as my wife and fill the world with tiny little versions of her. Fill it so damn full of her magic.
The thought grabs hold of my heart and pierces it like a dagger.
I’m fifty and dreaming of a life I can’t have.
Those things are for Hallie. The beautiful woman who monopolizes my thoughts night and day. She’s thirty. She has her whole life ahead of her. It would be selfish to tether her to me. No matter how much I want her. No matter how deep this connection to her is.
No matter that she’s mymagic. That thing everyone talks about, that I’d stopped believing in.
But she had a choice, and she’s made it.
As soon as I return to Manhattan, she’ll be leaving.
Clay and I stay out on the deck until well after midnight, catching up. The following morning, I’m coloring in a giant red dinosaur with the two boys who slept over too. They’re laughing at the Beaufort Diamond earring I give the T-Rex as I soak up every minute I have with them before Denver arrives.
Sullivan’s name lights up the screen on my phone.
“Son?” I smile, adding an Indiana Jones style hat to the dinosaur. I wink at them, and they erupt into more giggles.
“Dad?”
His grim tone makes me put the crayon down.
“What’s wrong?”
“I’m on my way to the hospital. Halliday was taken in. There was an issue with the paparazzi when she was out with Sinclair.”
My blood turns to ice. “What?”
