When the man you love says something like that to you, there’s only one correct response.
“Kiss me,” I said.
“What about the ground rules?”
“We’re in bed,” I reminded him. “Not on the ground.”
“I haven’t finished my book yet,” he said.
I should’ve known he’d play hard to get.
I took the book from his hand, closed it, and then lightly tossed it onto the floor.
“How dare you. That was your mother’s favorite story,” he said in a scolding tone even as he took me into his arms and pressed me onto my back.
“You’re my favorite story.”
Chapter Nineteen
An hour later, I was lying on Duke’s bare chest in my bed, exhausted but smiling.
“I don’t think you’re a detective at all,” I said, yawning luxuriously under the covers. “I think you escaped a romance novel.”
“The Witch and the Duke?” he asked.
“The Wicked Witch,” I corrected, “and the Dashing Duke.Don’t forget your adjectives.”
“I won’t argue with the dashing part, but you’re hardly wicked, my love. Well, you were twenty minutes ago but not generally speaking.”
He rolled over so that we lay face-to-face, eye to eye. Duke looked resplendent in his suits, perfectly coiffed, and impeccably put together. How lucky was I that I got to see him like this—naked, dark hair mussed, five o’clock shadow before lunch. As he said…real.A real man with a heart of flesh and blood beating steadily under my palm.
“If Dr. Fanshawe saw me now, I’d never step foot in another book again,” I said.
“If Dr. Fanshawe saw you now, we’d have her arrested for breaking and entering and voyeurism. So there.”
“We probably shouldn’t have done this. It’ll only make saying goodbye harder.”
“Then let’s not say goodbye,” Duke said. “Let’s stay together, rules be damned.”
“Duke, I can’t—”
“Youcan,” he said. “You won’t.”
“If you leave your book series, your books will cease to exist. You get that, right?”
“I’ll still be here in this world, won’t I? I’ll join your reality and live and grow old and die here.”
“Exactly. You hear the problem with that? The grow old and die part? The no books anymore part?”
“I’ll be with you. I’ll have a life with you. Isn’t that worth a few books?”
He was talking as if it were nothing to him, as if he were simply moving from Chicago to Oregon and not leaving the realm of imagination for the stone-cold world of rock-hard reality.
I opened my mouth to make another argument but knew I couldn’t win, not this way.
“You want tea?” I asked, changing tactics.
“Always and forever.”
