I walked toward it.
I didn't run the math once.
20
TOMMY
Iwas waiting for her in the lobby.
I'd told her seven and I'd been there at six-forty, which was a thing I'd never done in my life. Tommy Dane did not wait early for women. Tommy Dane arrived on time and on point, and the woman in question caught up. That was the rhythm. That had always been the rhythm.
I'd come down at six-forty so I could see her come in.
The Palmetto Rose lobby was a long, warm room with palmetto trees in big planters and a fire in a fireplace the size of a horse stall, and the staff moved through it with the smooth Charleston choreography of a place that had been doing this for a hundred and fifty years. Sasha was at the front desk with her dark curls pinned back, working a leather guest book, and she'd looked up when I came down the staircase and given me the small private nod she gave that meantwe're set.
We were set.
I'd called Lucas after the flower shop. He'd picked up on the first ring like he'd been waiting on me, which he probably had been. I'd told him what I needed. He hadn't asked twice. Hadn'tasked once, really. He'd saidgive me forty-five minutes,and forty-five minutes later I'd had a confirmation that I'd had to read three times to believe.
There were perks to saying yes to a home for wayward warriors.
I stood by the fire with my hands in my pockets and watched the front door.
She came in at six-fifty-eight.
The bell above the door gave the small bright ring bells gave in old buildings, and she stopped one step inside the door and looked around the way a person looked around a place she'd never been.
She wasn't in a gown.
She wasn't in a tiara.
I'd known she wouldn't be, because I knew Rebecca Lynn. But knowing she wouldn't be was different from seeing her stand inside the front door of The Palmetto Rose in dark jeans, a black top under a cream cardigan, and brown leather boots.
She wasspectacular.
It hit me low.
I'd seen her in a t-shirt this morning. I'd seen her in nothing the night before. I'd seen her stand on a Charleston sidewalk in a coat with a guitar case slung across her back and look like a girl who wasn't sure she was allowed to want what she wanted, and I'd seen her walk across a restaurant floor toward me with her face still doing the slightly-unfinished thing faces did right after a person had been somewhere bigger than the room she was standing in.
I had not seen herdressed for a thing she'd decided to do.
The hair was loose and curled. Gold earrings caught the firelight. The cardigan was the color of the inside of a peach. And the boots—God, the boots—were probably the same boots that had walked her into Charleston with a few dollars in her pocketand a guitar on her back, and she'd worn them tonight, and the wearing of them was a sentence I didn't know how to read out loud yet.
She saw me and her whole face changed.
I crossed to her.
"Hi."
"Hi."
"You came."
"I said I would."
"I know."
"You doubted me?"
