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“Hm, good point. So…yes. Together forever. That’s what’s in my head.”

“Centuries together,” Leslie said.

The idea was so thrilling, she could have danced on the tabletop. She pressed a palm to his chest, and his heart gave a hard beat against her hand. His face was crinkled with emotion.

She cupped his jaw in one hand and whispered, “Tell me, Ryker. Whatever it is.”

“You. It’s you. Patient with me from that second night, when you saw my fear of falling. Patient with me when I forget to slake and force us on a detour because I can’t pay attention to two things at the same time.” He gave a brittle laugh. “Heck, you’re even patient when I fight bedtime like an actual toddler.”

She’d sensed this raw place in him before, more than once during their long-distance hours of conversation. Someone had convinced him that basic kindness was remarkable, that a woman who was falling in love with him might not bear with him in his difficult moments. She pressed a soft kiss to the stubble on his jaw, the proof of how hard he’d been working on the case that had kept him stymied for a week.

“I seem to remember,” she said, “that when I broke up with you and hung up instead of listening, you were patient with me too.”

“That was different.”

“No, it wasn’t. That’s the whole point, Ryker. It wasn’t different. It’s all the same. It’s us being who we are for each other. Look, we do need to take some time with this. We’ve been together barely two months.”

He nodded. “I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Hush,” she said with a finger against his lips. Her dear man went perfectly still. “What I’m trying to tell you is… We need to be reasonable about the timeframe, but not because I don’t know yet what I want.”

His lips parted against her finger. His blue eyes glittered, continued to grow brighter as she continued to speak.

“Laurence Ryker Gould Maddox, you’re who I want. I’m not falling in love with you. I’m already there. I fell for you the weekend you showed up in my life unannounced and called yourself my backup husband.”

“Leslie.”

His heartbeats were strong against her cheek, almost too strong for a vampire. And they were fast. She counted five of them in ten seconds.

“Shh,” she said. “Ryker, listen. I’m with you. I’m for you. I’m not going anywhere. And I love you.”

He pressed his face into her hair and took a deep, human-sounding breath. Passersby studiously ignored them.

At last Ryker lifted his head. His smile was pinched with self-consciousness. “So…that was quite a tangent.”

“It was, wasn’t it?”

“And I love you.”

He kissed her, but they kept this one brief, their emotions too strong for more—at least while they sat in full view of the bar.

“I should…” She nodded across the table. “Retreat?”

“I guess.”

Leslie crossed to the far side of the booth and immediately hated the absence of his arms around her. But it was for the best for now.

“Claire and Tai,” he said. “Your original question.”

“If it’s okay to tell me.”

“She’s not only a bartender here. She’s half-owner, and Tai was supposed to be the other half. For a while they were trying to figure out what to do with this space. Claire bought the building for a song, but she needed a business partner. Tai’s extremely well-off thanks to an inheritance he hates to talk about, and he was looking for a local business he could invest in. They hadn’t known each other long when this all started, but they both knew me.”

Ouch. “And they both trust you.”

“Yeah.” Ryker leaned back in the booth and tilted his head toward the draped ceiling. “So… Claire had talked about something more mainstream in the beginning. But then—it was pretty abrupt, actually—she said no, she’d changed her mind about running a ‘vanilla-friendly business.’”

He winced as he said the words, despite his air-quotes clarification. Leslie glanced toward the bar. Now Claire was serving a man wearing bike shorts and a bright-yellow athletic tee.