Page 69 of Crazy In Love (Love & War #2)

“Stop talking to each other!” Booker snaps, then back to his call.

“Push my nine-thirty out, and tell Chauncy I’ll call him when I’m done in here.

I can’t step out right now.” He stops and listens, then nods.

“Yes. I’m aware. I’m willing to risk it.

Thanks.” He drops the phone back into the cradle and glares straight between my eyes.

So I flash a bright smile and pray it simmers his fiery mood. “Willing to risk what?”

“None of your damn business! If you no longer work for Gable, Gains, and Hemingway, then such information will no longer be shared with you.”

“But… I do still work for Gable, Gains, and Hemingway.” I bring my hands up again. “Please?”

“I’ve offered her a position in Rome,” Amedeo counters smugly. “Remotely, of course. Full time. Full salary. Starting immediately.”

“This is not a bidding war! She’s my staff member, and I’ll make my decision without a trojan horse from my now competitor.

That’s not what we’re doing today.” He swings angry eyes back to me.

“One week remote, one week in the office. But you don’t start remote until six months from now, when I can be assured you’ve got a handle on your new position. ”

“One week a month in the office, the rest remote, starting one week from now.”

His eyes sizzle and burn. “This is not a negotiation.”

“No. But it kinda feels like a game of chess, and this move is what I call the Queen-whoop-de-do. The fact I’m willing to walk away without a job at all means I can be as ridiculous as I want.

It’s up to you to decide where you’ll draw your battle lines.

” I snag my purse and stand, and setting my contract back on his desk, I tilt closer.

“You know my terms, and I welcome your written counteroffer. Also, fun fact: the trojans were not Italian. I read about that war from the side of a condom packet.”

“I intend to make a written offer too, Ms. Tatum.” Amedeo turns in his chair, grinning. “May the better country win.”

“I look forward to hearing from you.” I cast one last look to Booker, my friend, my safe place to land for the last ten years, and know I’ll accept damn near any offer he makes. So long as it includes keeping my job and Plainview.

Finally, I slide my purse onto the crook of my arm and circle my chair.

“Thank you for your time, gentlemen. You each have my contact details.” Turning on my heels and digging my hand into my bag, I scoop my phone out, desperate to see what else Chris has texted. Hungry for whatever words he’s sent.

Cazzo means fuck. I’m already rolling that one into my vocabulary. And vaffanculo means to fuck off.

I expect to say that one to Tommy pretty often.

Ti amo means I love you. I don’t know if you know that. But I looked it up online and that’s what it says.

Snickering, I tap at the screen and start my reply, and with my free hand, I tug the office door open and stride through.

“Ti amo. It’s kinda smooth, huh?”

Startled, I swing my head around and risk my life when my neck clicks and my stomach somersaults. Then I lock eyes with Christian freakin’ Watkins, standing right where I stood before I came into the office. His back pressed to the wall, and his phone in his hands.

“Chris?” I spin back to face Booker, still at his desk, then around again to make sure Chris is still where I left him. I think. “What are you… what…” I toss my phone into my bag and let my hands dangle by my sides. “You’re in New York?”

“I’m wherever you are.” He moves off the wall, dragging a carry-on suitcase and stopping it beside his thigh. “Lucky for me, there’s still this tiny window where I can make a cheesy declaration of love and you’ll know it was because I wanted to, and not because you told me to.”

Fat tears well up in my eyes, blinding me to the beautiful, handsome, mildly panicked man in front of me.

“You know I hate speaking in front of a crowd. And dammit, Fox, you know my hands are shaking, even if I do a decent job of hiding it.”

“Do… do you want to come to my office? So you can speak in privacy?”

“NO!” He shouts at the top of his lungs, drawing eyes from every person on this floor… and possibly security, too. “No, I don’t want privacy, Fox Tatum. I want to declare that I LOVE YOU.”

“Shh! Jesus.” I stumble forward and press my hand to his mouth. “You’re making a scene.”

“I KNOW I’M MAKING A SCENE!” He pushes my hand off, then throws his in the air, and with exaggerated movements, he stomps in a circle. “MY NAME IS CHRISTIAN WATKINS, AND I’M IN LOVE WITH FOX TATUM.”

“Chris!”

“I’M MOVING TO NEW YORK. BECAUSE MY GIRLFRIEND LIVES IN NEW YORK. AND IF SHE MOVES TO ROME, THEN I’LL GO THERE, TOO. I’LL JUST NEED A MINUTE TO WORK ON VISAS.”

“Stop shouting! ”

“I will not stop shouting! I’m ti amo with my girlfriend!”

“He doesn’t speak it properly,” Amedeo groans, stopping in the doorway. “Americans always say it wrong. And that accent is…”

“Hillbilly,” I murmur. “It’s hillbilly.”

“I brought you sheets.” Chris drops to his knees and feverishly unzips his suitcase, flopping the heavy shell case open and presenting, a’la Simba on pride rock, a package of silky black. “I’ll trade my sheets if it means I get to keep you.”

“Chris.” I lower into a crouch and meet his eyes. “You can stop.”

“And my forks, too.” He whips open the other side of the case and reveals his entire cutlery set. Not just the forks. “I’ll use whatever silverware you ask me to use, if it means we can try for round two.”

“You don’t have to give anything up. You can keep your sheets and?—”

“And my shirts.” He stands again, grabbing my hand and yanking me up, then he fists the back of his shirt. “I’ll give up the clothes on my back and wear a burlap sack if you need me to.” His eyes burn with desperation. “Please don’t need me to. That shit is insanely itchy.”

“Chris—”

“And your pen.” He reaches around and snags my pen from his back pocket, presenting it the way others might a diamond ring.

“It fell out of your purse in my truck that first day after I picked you up from the airport. You spent the whole fucking drive arguing with me over who had more claim over Franky, then you jumped out to hug Alana and kicked your bag over. I found the pen the next day, and when you asked me about it, I didn’t wanna give it back. ”

“You had my pen this whole time?”

“I’ll sell my house and use the money to buy something here. Or in Rome. Or London. I’ll buy you property wherever you need it, and if that means I’m broke and can’t afford the sheets I like, then I don’t mind.”

“Chris, stop?—”

“My skin has never itched as much as it has in the last forty-eight hours. I don’t sleep unless I’m with you.

I don’t eat unless we’re okay. I don’t want to be Hazel’s godfather if her godmother is on the other side of the world.

And I can’t invite anyone into my home office to play chess now anyway. Not after we?—”

“That’s enough of that.” I clap my hand over his mouth and burn. I know my cheeks fire red. “Jesus. From no crowds at all, to offering to take your shirt off and telling them that we… That we?—”

“Have sex?”

Booker tips his head back and groans.

I draw a fortifying breath and close my eyes, knowing , once I open them again, this will all be just a dream. A hallucination brought on by stress. “Maybe I drowned in the bathtub last night, huh? Maybe none of this is real.”

“I flew to New York to be with you.” Chris takes my hands, pulling me in until our chests touch and his warm breath hits my chin. “I was expecting you to say no, because you have a shitty habit of sabotaging anything good you could have. You’re toxic as hell, Fox Tatum, and irritating to boot.”

“Well… thanks?”

“But I met this cab driver last night. He brought me to my hotel and told me a story about his wife.”

“Wait. What?—”

“She’s gone now. She died. After fifty years of marriage.

And to us, when we’re not yet thirty, fifty years of marriage sounds like a really long time.

But I swear to you, from where he was sitting, it wasn’t nearly enough.

He told me about this bed she’d made him buy and how he kicks the wooden leg every damn day.

He said he gets sad now on the rare days he doesn’t kick it. ”

Eugene. My beloved Eugene.

“I want you to irritate me, Fox. I want you to hide my forks, and destroy my sheets, and disrespect the rules of chess. I want you to do all of these things and tell me, at least once a day, that you ti amo me.”

“That’s wrong!” Amedeo growls. “You’re saying it wrong!”

“If you’re in Rome, then that’s where I’ll be. If you’re in London, then I’m heading to London.”

“And if she’s heading to Plainview?” Exhaling a tired sigh, Booker leans against the doorframe and scrubs a hand over his face. “What if she’s negotiated a job in that hillbilly backward-ass nowhere? What do you say to that?”

His eyes swing back to mine, wide and questioning and only half panicked. “Plainview?”

“You didn’t already sell the house, did you?”

“My house?” he gulps. “You… my house?”

“I could live at the bookstore for a little while, I guess. Make sure we’re still in ti amo .”

“Not. Right!”

“But eventually, I’m gonna get tired of driving across town in the middle of the night, then sneaking out again in the morning before Alana wakes up. That kind of nonsense is for twenty-something-year-olds. I’m turning thirty soon.”

“You want to live at my house?” Finally, his lips curl into a smile. “You promise?”

“Can we go bed shopping?”

“Yes!”

“But we have to buy the bed you hate the absolute most. It has to be white and heavy, and if you think it’s ugly, that’s better.”

“Okay.” He draws my hands higher, breathing warm air between his palms. “And we’ll fly to Rome how often?”

“Once a month,” Amedeo declares.

“Never!” Booker snarls. “Our negotiations are not yet complete. For now, she’ll fly to New York one week a month.” And then he sighs. “Starting next month, once she’s settled in at her new place.”

“Which will be your place.” My cheeks stretch higher, and my lips tremble. But my smile is back. And damn, it feels good. “This was a really nice declaration of love, by the way.”

“You think so?” He pulls back to study the mess he’s made. “It was insanely hard getting that silverware past TSA. I almost got an internal exam.”

“Everyone would have been looking at you.”

“I hated every single second of it.” He slides his hand around to the back of my neck and tugs me to the tips of my toes. “I amo you, Fox Tatum.”

“Gah!” Amedeo huffs. “You’re doing it badly on purpose.”

“This is how you feel when you take my forks, huh? You do it on purpose because it’s kinda fun.”

“Yeah.” I study his lips and wait. Wait. Wait. It’s not a declaration of love until we kiss. “You love me? Out loud? Are you willing to go to a town meeting and tell all those old bitches to stop looking at me mean?”

“So willing. I’ll shout at them if you want me to.” He presses his forehead to mine. “You love me, too, right? Not just friends?”

I choke out a silly, trembling laugh. But then I shake my head and set my hands on his shoulders. “Not just friends. Not even friends.” I lick my lips and wait for the payoff. It’s coming. “We’re going to annoy the hell out of each other.”

“I hope so.” He drags me closer and seals his promise with a kiss, swiping my bottom lip with his tongue and squeezing the back of my neck with his fingers until it hurts.

But it hurts so good. “My house. On the lake. We’ll share Franky and Hazel equally.

I’ll cook nice food, so you get to smell something other than deep-fried crap all the time.

Oh, and I wanna stop at the Galápagos before we go home. ”

“Okay.” I kiss him, too. I’m allowed. He’s mine now. “I still have a week left of my vacation time, anyway.”

“But what about the olives?”

Stunned, I inch back and search his eyes. “What?”

“The olives.” He stares, stares, stares until I feel the heat of his intensity. “Do you, or do you not, like olives?”

“I hate olives.” God, it feels good to say so. “I hate them so much, Chris.”

“I knew it!” He fists my hair and brings me to the very tips of my toes. “I’m gonna make a point of knowing you better than I know myself. No more olives, I promise.”

He’s my Lloyd Dobler, and this is my moment.

All along, I thought the moment was about everyone on the outside, watching on and thinking, ‘ Oh man, she’s so lucky !’

Turns out, I’ve forgotten about them.

“I amo you, Chris. Forever.”

Continue the Love & War series with Hard To Love

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