“Definitely feel that offer dropping,” I muse with a pointed look at Vince. “Give her the phone. Unlocked. So she can delete the video.”
“Grey—” he starts.
“I know about your child support issue,” Sabrina says to him.
Fuck, I love her.
My heart swells and my eyes prickle with the sudden realization, but it’s true.
I do.
I don’t need to go back to Snaggletooth Creek andsee if this goes anywhere.
It’s already gone somewhere for me.
I love this woman.
I love her confidence.
I love her heart.
I love the code that she lives and gossips by.
I love that Vince is visibly trembling as he hands his phone to her so she can delete the video he was taking of us.
She makes quick work of what she needs to do while Jitter pushes against me, panting happily and wagging his tail with enough force to classify it as a weapon of restaurant destruction while I happily rub his thick fur all over his wiggly overgrown puppy body.
“If I were the type of person to throw electronics in the ocean, this would be gone right now. You’re lucky I’m not stabbing it with a steak knife.Respect people’s privacy, asshole.” Sabrina points to the table and circles her finger around it. “I don’t know what else was going on here, but whatever he apparently just offered you,take it. Trust me on this.”
“Sir,” the maître d’ says to me, “I need the dog to leave.”
“Duchess?” I murmur.
Like hell they’re getting her real name.
“Don’teventry to get on my good side with that smile right now,” she replies pertly. She nods to the maître d’. “Thank you for your understanding. Jitter, come. Grey, you too.Now.”
I’m smiling again while I follow her out of the restaurant and onto the street. “You’re here.”
“You left me.”
“I was coming back.”
“You didn’t tell me that.”
“I got tied up in research and straightening my cape.”
Am I stepping as close to her as Jitter will let me, settling my hands on her hips and still smiling like I’ve forgotten how to frown?
Yes. Yes, I am.
But then she blinks and her eyes take on a sheen that suggests tears, and I can’t smile anymore. “Sabrina, I’m not laughing at you. I’m so damn glad to see you, and I can’t—”
She clutches my arms. “I kept telling myself you didn’t ghost me to get back at me for Hawaii, that I knew better, butI just didn’t know. And Imissyou and I’m not supposed to miss you. I have a heart of iron when it comes to men butyou gave Mimi the café. That’s what my grandpa did for my grandma when they got married. He built the café for my grandma because she was so sad that the man she loved had knocked her up and dumped her and she knew Grandpa didn’t love her. She kept telling him she knew she was a burden. But even with his own heart breaking, he didn’t want her to think she was a burden, ever. So he did the only thing he could to make her happy. Do you have any idea how impossible it is to not think you’re every bit the man that my grandpa was when you do the same things he did? When you build something to make someone else happy no matter the cost to you?”
I clear my throat and blink a few times. “I didn’t build it.”
“But you saved it and you gave it to her and then youfucking ignored meand I have a damntitle to the buildinginmy namenow, andhow fucking dare you? Do you know what I have to do now? I have to change it. I have to change it and call itBee & Nuggetand install your beehives in the windows and put your massive, gaudy fiberglass bee on the outside of the building and sell kombucha so that it can beoursinstead ofmineoryours.”
