"It's overwhelming," he agreed a bit wryly. "You've been a champion through it all. You're going to go home and get enough sleep tonight?—"
She gave him a sly glance upward, and he looked increasingly determined. "—youaregoing to go home and get a good night's sleep, and tomorrow everything will go back to normal. It'll be good for you."
"You're good for me," she said happily. "Have I mentioned that I love you?"
Luke stopped in the middle of the street, gazing down at her, then lifted her in the warmest, gentlest hug she could imagine. "You said it once, but you were being silly then. I love you too, Sabrina Keep. Let's live happily ever after together."
"That sounds perfect," she mumbled into his shoulder. "Should I tell The Girls that we were fake dating at the beginning?"
"Were we, though?" he asked as he put her down again. "I knew I wasn't. I just couldn't say so."
"I was throwing out the whole fake dating idea within seventy-two hours myself," she admitted. "But even if we backdate the relationship to the moment Emmy introduced us, that still leaves the problem of me having told them about you six weeks earlier."
"We'll confess it at our wedding," he suggested.
Sabrina's heart flipped and she gazed up at Luke, breathless. "Our wedding? Is that a proposal?"
Luke looked faintly horrified. "God, no. I don't have a ring and I'm not down on one knee. I'll do agoodjob when I propose, I promise. But…" His eyes brightened with hope and laughter. "Youwillsay yes, right?"
"Well, yes, obviously!"
"Right, so, we'll confess at our wedding. The one we're not planning yet because I haven't given you the romantic proposal of your dreams yet."
"Oh, well, if we're talking about the proposal of mydreams…" She stood on her toes to pull him down for a kiss, and smiled at him. "In that case, okay. We'll confess at the theoretical-but-definite wedding in our future."
"Perfect." Luke slipped his arm around her shoulder and they walked the rest of the way home, where he made absolutely certain she would sleep extremely well, and woke her up in the morning with a cup of coffee and a grin. "You look refreshed."
"Iamrefreshed." Sabrina sat up to have her coffee in bed, smiling at Luke, not even sleepily. "You're terrible for me. Healthy lifestyle stuff. This is just the worst!"
"I live to serve," Luke said cheerfully. "I don't have a client this morning, so I thought I'd hang around and mess up your morning routine for going to work."
The coffee was perfect, and Sabrina closed her eyes happily as she sipped. "As long as you keep bringing me coffee this good you can mess up my routines all you want. Walk me to work today? Although honestly I should stay in and work on the next project."
"I'll walk you over to the site and back home again so you can focus on your next big design with some exercise under your belt, how's that sound?"
"Ugh. So healthy."
Luke laughed. "Yeah, I'm afraid so. I'll make breakfast while you shower, if you want."
"Youneedbreakfast, so yes, do that. I'll steal a few bites." Sabrina finished the coffee and went to shower, nearly purring with happiness. Luke had eaten by the time she got out, though he'd left a hard-boiled egg for her, and she nibbled on that as they wandered toward the train station building site.
There weresomany people there, Sabrina thought on the approach. Not just the crew, but—"Oh my God. Those are police cars." She broke into a run, and Luke, who could easily have outrun her, instead kept pace with her as they rushed up to the site. There were half a dozen police, at least that many black-suited Gladiator Architect security guards, the entire construction crew, arson investigator Liz Rice, several townspeople, and, in the middle of it all, a handcuffed and wild-eyed young man who looked as if he'd seen better days.
"Wolves," he was saying hoarsely, as Sabrina got close enough to hear. "There werewolves. Huge. Teeth. Eyes. And all the cats. Big ones. Too big to be house cats. Foxes.Bigfoxes. They stared at me with those eyes," he whispered. "They surrounded me and wouldn't let me leave. There were so many of them."
Everyone around him was trying to muffle laughter or exchanging pained looks, and Sabrina couldn't help but wonder if some of those glances were alsoknowing. She looked up at Luke, whose expression was so perfectly neutral that she was then certain that he, at least, suspected the young man was telling the absolute truth. She pressed a hand over her mouth as Liz Rice came to her side and said, quietly, "That's our arsonist," as if Sabrina hadn't already guessed that.
"He came back to the scene early this morning to try to set a fire again," Liz went on quietly. "The security team your company sent stopped him, but he's clearly had a mental break.I don't know whether to be angry or feel sorry for him. A little of both, maybe."
"And a—" The young man's voice broke as if even he realized this sounded crazy, but he said it anyway: "And akoala."
At that point, a high-pitched giggle broke through the various attempts to muffle humor, and half the people on the site lost it. Absolute rage swept the arsonist's face and he shrieked, "I know what I saw! It was real! I'm not crazy! There were so many of them! Animals, surrounding me! Stopping me from setting my fire! They were real! They were real!"
He was still shouting as the police escorted him to one of the vehicles and guided him inside. Liz, at Sabrina's side, exhaled unhappily. "If he's planning an insanity defense, I've got to hand it to him for getting started early. I'm sorry, Sabrina. I really thought the danger was past."
"In a way I guess it was," Sabrina said quietly. "The security team here grabbed him, so he was never going to be able to do any more harm, even if he came back. Thank you, though. Thank you for everything. I hope you're able to tie up a lot of cold cases with his arrest."
Liz gave her a brief smile and nodded professionally before going to join the police. The construction crew all rushed in the way they'd done the evening before, everybody talking to reassure themselves, and Tiffany let it continue for several minutes before giving a sharp whistle. "All right, everybody, let's get to work."
