Page 44

A few chairs down, a woman reporter from a rival magazine says to her neighbor, “Welp, that’s it for ‘Emerald’s most eligible bachelors.’ Cosmin Ardelean snapped up last year, and now Klaus Franke is off the market too…”

My hands shake as I collect my things—I can barely get my phone into my bag without dropping it. As I stand, I subtly inspect the belly area of my outfit, but the blazer covers my skirt in a way that camouflages the “bump.”

I guess people don’t know? Nobody’s looking at me, aside from Ian, who—to my shock—says, “That wasn’t entirely unexpected.”

I shake my head slightly. “What? How so?”

“Your article in August. There was a bit of hauntedness to Klaus Franke in it, didn’t you think? You captured it beautifully. Like… he’s this battle-weary general who can’t wait for the war to be over.” He tips a nod toward where Klaus exited. “Looks like the general has retired.”

I struggle to reply, quickly examining the article in my mind, its shape and texture and tone. “Do you really think so?”

Ian chuckles. “Don’t you ? You must—you’re the one who wrote it.” Shouldering his bag, he gives a friendly wink. “See you at lunch, Evans.”

I walk out as if in a dream… and keep walking. I can’t be here right now.

In the outside pocket of my bag, my phone is buzzing insistently. I take it out and see messages from Phaedra plastered down the screen.

Phae: Don’t keep me in suspense. WHAT DID YOU THINK?

Phae: Omfg you have no idea how hard it was not to say anything

Phae: Bitch, open these messages! I’m dyyyyying to talk

Phae: Looks like you’re out of excuses not to be in love with him

I shut down my phone and shove it back into my bag, then head for the hotel.

I’m trying to keep my expression and body language as neutral as possible, sitting here, because there’s nothing that draws creeps faster in a bar than looking like the proverbial “little lost sheep.” Some smarmy businessman with a comb-over will invariably conclude that you need an umbrella drink and their sparkling wit, and dammit, I want to be left alone.

But I know if I go back to my room, someone will find me.

Phae’s words echo:

You’re out of excuses not to be in love with him.

Something could happen to challenge those assumptions…

Your phrasing went from “kinda halfway in love” to “I’m still in love with him.”

Has life called my bluff? I thought I had iron-clad reasons not to take another chance on Klaus, but they’ve fallen away one after another. Which means… the resistance I’m still feeling must be something else. It’s time to be honest with myself.

My aunt said, You’ve got some unresolved stuff, kiddo. It’s not an accident that you always lose your heart to unavailable older men…

It’s the last hurdle, a thing that stands between Klaus and me. Growing up, I still had a great mother figure in Auntie Min. But a dad? Somehow it felt like he’d abandoned me more than Sherri had, because there was no replacement for him.

My childhood didn’t include “healthy male influences.” There were men at church, but they were just cordial. I didn’t even have any particularly great male teachers.

There’s no denying it: Part of me is afraid to install Klaus as a full-time father because I’m worried our daughter will get used to him, and then he’ll leave .

I thought it was the perfect solution, him being an ocean away most of the time.

A good excuse for his lack of involvement.

I’ve pictured it in my head a hundred times, me talking to our daughter, telling her consolingly, “Your father would love to be here for [major life event], but it’s just not possible with his job.

He’ll visit in a few months and bring you a present. ”

Suddenly it hits me with such force, such obviousness, that my hand jerks on the glass and sloshes the contents: Every time I picture a scene of me making comforting excuses for my daughter’s absent dad, she looks around seven years old.

My age , when Sherri and Jason left.

The funny thing is, Jason was loyal and steadfast…

to Sherri. I’ve learned the whole story while working on the book.

He knew I was in good hands with Auntie Min, who’d half raised him too when his own parents were doing a poor job of it.

After Sherri went to prison, he could’ve divorced her.

But he moved to the town nearest the prison and made a life there.

He visited four days a week—the maximum allowed.

He wrote her a postcard every… single… day , most of them handmade.

And California is one of four states that allow conjugal visits, and once Sherri was approved for them, they spent their thirty-six hours of “trailer time” together whenever possible.

A few weeks ago, in a discussion about why he didn’t come back to Kentucky even to visit me, I angrily asked him, Didn’t you think one parent might at least be better than zero?

His sorrowful half-smile cut into my resentment when he said, Yes, that’s exactly what I thought. Which is why I chose Minnie. One good parent is better than a bad one. And in a lifetime of painful choices, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

That conversation helped—I’ve reflected on it a lot. I’m still a little uneasy around him. It’s slow going but progressing. He’s actually really warm and funny and a big reader, so there’s every reason to like him. I guess I just have more work to do in the “relationships with men” department.

Klaus has been collateral damage.

Where do I go with this revelation about my subconscious fears? And how do I feel about the epic career sacrifice Klaus is making? Can I trust it?

When I first sat down here tonight, I opened my phone and read through the article I published in August, trying to detach myself from it and see it as a reader. And dammit, Ian was right: All the signs of Klaus’s discontentment with his job were there. How did I miss it?

Since meeting him, I’ve been so focused on the things that impacted me —like his grief over Sofia—that I missed a lot.

We both got plenty of things wrong.

I’m so confused…

I reach for a bowl of pistachios on the bar and crack one, spinning an empty shell half beside my glass, lost in thought.

Then, exactly as it happened two years ago, charcoal gray moves into my periphery, and I smell Neroli Portofino.

I close my eyes for a moment, steeling myself for the conversation.

“This is the last place I expected to find you,” Klaus says with amusement. “Under the circumstances.”

I flick a fingertip at the tall glass in front of me, which is still nearly full of the magenta sludge I’m having trouble getting down.

“This time I got the beet juice on purpose. I thought it’d be healthy, but…

yeah, it’s super gross.” I glance at Klaus, admiring, as I did that first night, his charming one-side dimple.

“You’re free to order a Courvoisier though. ”

“It’s not the same if we can’t share it. I don’t plan to have any drinks until the day you do again, should you choose to.”

“Ah. Out of pity?”

“Solidarity.”

“Enjoy the flavor of solidarity.” I slide my glass toward him.

He takes a sip, and his brow crumples. “That is admittedly vile.”

“Right?”

We sit silently for a minute. They’re playing French pop music over the lounge’s speakers again, and around us there’s conversation in several languages: I recognize Italian, Arabic, Russian.

“I’d like to talk about my announcement today,” Klaus finally says.

“I’m still processing.”

“I assumed as much. I’m not trying to compel you into a decision about our future. I’d like to tell you more about my choice to retire, and what my long-term intentions are.”

I wave a vague hand his way. “Have at it.”

“Talia.” He brushes back the curtain of hair I’m hiding behind as I look down at my steepled hands. His simple touch on my ear sets my heart racing. “Please look at me.”

With a sharp sigh, I twist on the barstool. “A ‘grand gesture’ like that is… You claim you’re not railroading me into a decision, but how else am I supposed to see this? You’re walking away from a five-million-a-year job.”

“Not to sound insufferable, but you know I don’t need the money. My stake in Emerald and my wealth from SindeZmos amount to more than I’ll ever need, frankly. Half my income goes to charitable giving each year.”

I wish I had a good comeback, but the last part ensured I’d look like a jerk for snarking about his wealth. Everyone knows Klaus is generous.

He puts a hand on one side of my knees, very lightly.

“I will never coerce you. I wouldn’t dare try to tell you what’s best, because”—he lifts both hands with a boyish look of vulnerability—“I have no clue what that might be. But I’m following my heart.

” He gently braces my knees between his own.

“I’m in love with you, Talia. I have been since before I was sure I could love again.

And I’ll do whatever it takes, for as long as you need, to become worthy of your love in return.

If in the end you don’t share my feelings, I will accept that.

But irrespective of the nature of our relationship, I’ll be a good father to our daughter.

Nothing else on earth is more important. ”

Dammit, now I wish we’d had this conversation in my room and not the lounge, because my vision is shimmering with tears, and I don’t want to cry in public.

Partially it’s happiness, because… what person doesn’t long for a swoony declaration?

But it’s also fear. I’m a wobbling Jenga tower before the last piece is pulled, threatening a rain of messy, noisy chaos.

“I want to believe in this—believe in us —so much,” I confess. “But just wanting it doesn’t make it magically work, even if I’m in love with you—”

The inadvertent admission stops me, and my face heats unbearably. Klaus lifts my hands and kisses them. I’m expecting him to latch on to the confession, but he surprises me by letting the words just exist between us.

“I must show you something,” he tells me, sliding his hands from mine with reluctance and taking his phone from a pocket. “An email I received this morning.”

He looks so serious that I’m expecting the worst. We’ve been waiting to see if our joint offer for the Marshall farm has been accepted. His thumbs dance across the screen and he sets the phone down, rotating it my way.

We hereby accept your offer to purchase the property located at 41 Poplar Drive for the price of $500,000 USD, subject to the terms and conditions outlined in the attached purchase agreement.

My head is spinning, and I put a hand over my eyes. The thudding of my heart dulls the music in the lounge.

I peek at Klaus from between two fingers. “Is this real?”

“It is.” He stands and gently draws me into his arms.

“Oh my God… we did it!” My face is pressed against his chest—so warm and solid—and my voice is an overwhelmed sob of laughter as I manage to squeak, “Looks like I’m the thirty percent shareholder of my dream house.”

Klaus pulls back a few inches to look down at me.

“The other seventy percent will be held in trust for our daughter for the next few months, with you as trustee, and legally hers when she’s born.

” He bends to kiss my forehead. “The two of you, together, are the one hundred percent shareholders of my heart.”

The dark espresso heat of his gaze dissolves the last of my misgiving, and I take a steadying breath. “Seeing that you’re retired,” I manage in an emotion-raspy whisper, “I don’t suppose you’ve ever wanted to live on a fixer-upper farm in Kentucky?”

His lips near mine. “Nothing could possibly make me happier.”

I push up on my toes to meet him, throwing myself into a kiss as inevitable as the fall of that Jenga tower.

My hands are on his cheeks, as if I’m afraid he’ll disintegrate like a dream.

I don’t even open my mouth; I’m just so happy to be pressed against him, feeling his arms holding me firm and sure, smelling the spicy and familiar scent of his skin, feeling the vibration of his small, helpless groan of happiness.

When we finally part, staring at each other from a foot away, there’s a timid throat-clearing noise from nearby. I find Sherri and Jason looking on, awkward and apologetic.

Sherri waggles her fingertips hello. “I wasn’t sure if interrupting or eavesdropping was worse,” she explains with a wince. “Sorry for the bad timing.”

I turn in Klaus’s arms and step toward them to hold out both hands. Sherri grabs on right away, but Jason hangs back, staring at my left hand as if unsure what it signifies before gingerly clasping with mine.

“We got the Marshall farm!” I tell them.

Sherri yanks me into a strangling hug, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a kid, then thrusting me out at arm’s length, her delighted gaze going from me to Klaus, then over to Jason. She tips her head my way, encouraging him to say something to me.

He smiles, then glances to one side as if too bashful to meet my eyes. “Congratulations. I always remembered how you loved to go and feed apples to the horses when you were little. We’d ride over there on that old Gold Wing of mine. Not sure if you recollect that.”

My heart twists, but not in a bad way—more like a clock being wound up so it can move again. “I do,” I manage.

Sherri gathers me back into a one-arm hug and pulls me aside. Jason sits on the stool by Klaus’s, and they start chatting about the old farmhouse.

Leaning close to my ear, Sherri says, “Klaus is pretty great. We love him already.”

“You really do?”

“Oh, hell yes. He’s a peach—even Minnie’s warming up to him.

Do you know how much fun it’ll be, all of us sprucing up that old farm together?

Your dad’s real handy. There’s nothing he can’t build or fix.

” She takes my hands in hers. “Fixing our family is the project he wants most of all, if you’ll let him. ”

I look over at Jason and Klaus talking easily, and the clock of my heart ticks faster.

“You know,” Sherri goes on, “if you end up living half in Kentucky and half on that gorgeous Greek island of his… it’d be a pretty amazing life.

When I was planning for us all to move to California—picturing a glamorous and happy future for my daughter, full of possibility—it’s exactly the kind of thing I was wishing for.

” Her mouth tips in a bittersweet smile. “It was a long detour, but we made it.”

I glance at Klaus and my dad again, now both looking at what appears to be a website with horses on Jason’s phone. The last door opens inside me. The old scene in my mind fades away—the one where I’m telling my daughter why her father is gone—and is replaced by a new one.

All of us are in this picture.