I snorted. “Don’t I know that firsthand?”
He smiled, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “What if she hears that we’re engaged?”
“Oh.” I paused. “I guess I wasn’t really thinking about that all that clearly when I joked about it with your mother.” I winced. “I was just trying to make her angry.”
“Well, I’m sure you succeeded.”
He went quiet again, and since it was obvious he was thinking things through in his head, I let him be.
At least, until we got into his place and the door shut.
“What else?” I asked.
He stripped off his coat and tossed it over the back of his couch before turning to me. “I love you, Nettie.”
I licked my lips.
“And I know you love me, too.”
I didn’t bother to deny it. There would be no point. Even a random man we met on the side of the road could see that we were both gone for each other.
“That was never our problem, though,” I pointed out.
“I’d go kill her right now if it meant that I could have you for the rest of my life.”
I blinked.
“Shoot her right in the head, in the middle of her four-poster bed and silk sheets imported from Italy if I could say, at the end of the day, you would be mine.”
I stripped off my own jacket, suddenly hot.
“I want to give my grandmother the knowledge that you and I are back together before she dies,” he continued. “That’s one of her last wishes, you know. That we’d find our way back to each other.”
I did know.
Margery never stopped telling me that Boone was dying without me.
But…I was scared.
I didn’t want to feel the pain of loss like I had already once.
I didn’t want to ever feel that pain again.
And until his mother was out of the picture, I just couldn’t do it.
“Follow the plan,” I said quietly, studying him. “One day, when she’s gone, and in a way that won’t blow back on you…then we can be together. But until then…”
I left it hanging.
He nodded once.
“Good night, Boone.”
He swallowed. “Good night, Net.”
I walked up the stairs to the guest bedroom.
The only guestroom.
