Chapter 25
When I came back downstairs, dressed in the leggings and tunic I’d had on earlier and face scrubbed free of makeup, it was only Tink waiting for me, and it was jarring to see him full size. When Tink was what he liked to call “fun sized,” he was just adorable, but fully grown? There was no way you could help acknowledging how attractive he was, and that just made me feel weird.
Frowning, I looked around the foyer. “Where’s Caden?”
“He went ahead and is going to meet you in Tanner’s office,” he said in a voice so much deeper than what I was used to. “He left his car here for you to drive us.”
“Oh.” That was weird. “Did he fill you in on everything?”
“Most of it.” Tink stepped toward me. “He… he kissed you.”
Heat immediately smacked into my cheeks. “Yeah, he kind of did.”
“He didn’t kind of kiss you, Lite Bright. He looked like he was devouring your mouth.”
It had kind of felt like that.
“Brighton, I….” Tink trailed off as he slowly shook his head.
A kernel of dread took root in my stomach. “What?”
“Nothing. We should go.”
We really did need to get going, so when Tink handed me the keys that would allow me to drive Caden’s SUV, I took them. That kernel of dread grew though when Tink was unnaturallyquiet as he sat in the passenger seat. And Tink, even when he was full sized, was never quiet.
And he was almost never full-sized around me, not since, well, two years ago.
When we arrived at Hotel Good Fae, Tink headed off to the cafeteria while I went to Tanner’s office and waited for Caden. I had no idea how Tink stayed as fit as he did when I swore if he wasn’t talking, he was eating something.
Must be brownie metabolism.
Taking a shallow breath, I roamed around Tanner’s office, too antsy to sit down. Okay, I wasn’t antsy. I was….
I was feeling a thousand different things. Disbelief. Anger. Shock, and then under that, under all of that, there was also anticipation.
Anticipation that had everything to do with Caden.
I rolled my eyes as I walked over to the window, ignoring the dull twinge in my side. There was a bubbling giddiness that made me feelat leasta decade younger. Was that what love—
“Stop,” I told myself and then I laughed, because telling myself to stop thinking what I’d already thought was kind of pointless.
I smoothed my hands over my hair, which felt weird against my neck. I was so used to wearing it up, but Caden had said….
He’d said he liked my hair down.
Actually, he’d used far more eloquent words than that. What had he said? My hair was like—
The door opened in that moment and I spun toward it.
Caden walked in, closing the door behind him, and as he looked over at me, seeming to know exactly where I stood, I got a little lost in… well, in staring at him.
Shamefully lost.
He’d changed, too. Wearing a white dress shirt tucked into a pair of tailored black slacks, he actually looked like a prince—a mouthwatering prince.
And he’d kissed me—really kissed me.
How crazy was that?
