So he hadn’t told anyone about the fight. She gave a sigh of relief and flipped the flap up, then tugged out the glossy images. The first one was of the four of them, and they were all laughing. “This is a great shot,” she murmured, and then her voice caught in her throat as she flipped it over and caught sight of the image beneath it.
Her and Zander, maybe just a few seconds later? The photographer had zoomed in as Zander turned to her and brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. Her face was tipped up toward his and the look on his face… “Oh.”
“You guys are perfect for each other,” Dani said. “I know Zander said you want to take things slowly, but the way he looks at you…”
Faith blinked back tears.
It’s just a picture.
They’d both been swept up in the emotion of the day, that was all. “Thank you.” Her voice was thick and she coughed to cover it up.
“What’s that, Mommy?” Eric appeared at her side, tugging on her arm. The kid was getting too good at his stealth-mode sneak up.
“Careful of your fingers,” she whispered, dropping down to his level. She showed him the two pictures, and he reached out his index finger to touch Zander’s face on both pictures. Heart. Splat.
“I miss Zander,” he said.
“Me, too.”
“Me, three?” Dani added and Eric laughed.
Faith sighed. She needed to stop being so damn sad, so damn scared, and get over herself. She stood up. “Dani, this is Eric, my son. Eric, this is Zander’s sister.”
“I know.”
“You do?” asked Dani with an amused look.
He nodded. “Zander told me all about you.”
Oh dear lord. Faith pressed her lips together and tried to keep a straight face. Dani looked like she could handle crazy kids. “What on Earth did Zander tell you about Dani?”
Eric rolled his eyes. “I can’t tell you. They’re boy secrets.”
Dani laughed. “That means Zander called me a crazy bride.” She shrugged. “He wouldn’t be completely wrong.”
Eric frowned. “No…he said you were on the moon happy, and it was a man’s job to keep you there.” He nodded, proud of himself for remembering that. “And that’s cool, because I want to go to the moon.”
Faith stared at Eric, then looked at Dani, and as soon as their eyes met, they lost it.
“On the moon?” Faith repeated after she got her giggles under control, her voice still cracking with amusement.
“Keep me there?” Dani wiped at her eyes as she took a deep breath. “Oh kid, you’re a keeper. You’re going to make someone very happy someday.”
“I know.” He sighed. “Then I’ll have to stop wearing sweatpants. But Zander promises there’s cake.”
— —
Zander’s phone lit up and skittered on his bedrooms’ fake wood flooring. He had it on vibrate out of force of habit, but ever since Faith had sent her short response earlier that day, he’d been on hyper alert waiting for her call. He shoved the kit he’d been packing out of the way and lunged for the phone.
It was just a regular call, no video. His chest seized up and he told himself to settle the fuck down. “Hello?”
“Hi.” Her voice was so small, it broke his heart.
“Babe.” He swallowed. “God, I’ve missed you.”
She sniffled.
“No tears,” he whispered.
“I’m so sorry, Zander. I’ve been awful.”
“No, no, no. You’ve been scared. I get it. It’s okay.”
A long, slow, reedy exhale filled his ear. He wanted to feel that breath on his neck as he held her close. “I’ve missed you, too.”
He pressed the phone so close to his ear that it pinched his skin. “Then that’s all that matters, right?”
“Your sister found me and Eric at the park today.”
“Yeah?”
“She had a picture of us from the wedding that she thought we’d like.”
“And did you like it?”
Another sound that suspiciously hinted at tears. “Yeah.”
He laughed gently. “Good.”
“I’m scared, Zander.”
He wanted to tell her that he was, too, but that would be a lie. The truth was, they weren’t in the same place. Maybe they needed to talk about that. “What do you want?”
“I don’t know.” But it sounded like maybe she did, so he took a leap.
“I think you know what I want. I’ve hinted at it already, but you’ve said that you wanted to take things slow.”
“We’ve only known each other a short time. I think that’s fair.”
Maybe it was. But how he felt about her wasn’t reasonable, or fair, or rational. It didn’t feel like he’d known her for a short time. He knew she was a free spirit and a proud mother. A loyal daughter. A writer who could weave magic out of twenty-six ordinary letters, turning them into words that entertained and bewitched.
He knew her.
And he knew himself.
“I lied to you, Faith. I don’t want to be your Mr. Right Now, and you already know that. I want to be your Mr. Right, period. But it’s more than that. I want you to trust me with your deepest fears and I want to take care of you.”
“I think I want that, too.”
Think?
Fuck, this was hard. He could practically hear his mother, his brother, his sister all telling him to wake up and get with the program. Love was hard. Falling in love was the easy part. Keeping one’s shit together while the person you love freaks the fuck out—that was the real challenge.
But inside the doubtful wrapping was exactly what he’d been hoping to hear all this time. Despite her fear, Faith wanted him. He’d spent a fair bit of time thinking about how to take their relationship to the next level. Over the phone on the tail end of a fight wasn’t one the scenarios he’d considered, but he didn’t want to wait any longer. “Well, I know I want that. And I know it enough for both of us. But you can’t shut me out like that.”
“I’m really sorry.”
“Do it again and I’m showing up on your doorstep,” he said gruffly. “And then I’ll be court-martialed for going AWOL, so that would be bad.”
“Zander, don’t you dare risk something like that, not for me.”
Not for her? Crazy woman.
“Of course I’d do that for you.
I love you.
”
It would have felt a hell of a lot better if at the exact same moment she hadn’t said, “I don’t think we should do this on the phone.”
—EIGHTEEN —
“W
HAT?” Faith couldn’t have heard that correctly. Not after her silent treatment and hysterical meltdown.
Zander cleared his throat. “Maybe you’re right.”
“No, say it again,” she whispered, her pulse was flying.
“You sure? Because even a guy like me can be sensitive about—”
“I just meant you shouldn’t joke about going AWOL.” She couldn’t breath. “Say it again, Zander.”
“I love you,” he repeated, more roughly this time. “And I wanted to wait until we were on the same page and in the same province to spring that on you, but it needed to be said. I don’t want you to run scared because if you do, I’ll just chase you, and like I say, there are consequences to that. So…don’t be scared. I’ll wait forever for you to be on the same page. But I’m done waiting without action, you know? I’m going to tell you how I feel, because you deserve to hear it.”
“You love me.” She felt faint. And warm, suddenly, after days of being cold to her bones.
“Very much. What did you think I was going to say?”
Her first instinct was that no way was she telling him the truth. But that flew in the face of everything he just said. She closed her eyes and winced. “There might be a small part of me that worried you might think this is all just a bit much. Want to take a break or something.”
He laughed.
Laughed!
And not gently, either.
“It’s not funny.”
“It’s a little funny, because…” He sighed and laughed again. “You know what? I think we’ve had enough for one night. Tell me about the plans for Eric’s birthday party.”
“Wait.” She swallowed. “I love you, too.”
“You don’t need to say it just because I did.”
“But I do. And you deserve to hear it, way more than me. You’re lovely, Zander. And I’ve missed you.” As soon as she said it out loud, the truth of that statement released so much tension from her body. “I miss you, actively. And this is hard,
because
I love you.”
“You don’t know how good that sounds.” His voice poured more of that delicious warmth straight into her veins.
“Feels good to say, too.”
“I miss you too, babe. Both you and Eric.”
A pang of guilt sliced through her for keeping them apart the last few days. She’d lied to Eric—another pang, not the first she’d felt about it—and told him Zander had to work away from his phone.
“He’s been sleeping with the helmet every night.”
“Seriously? That’s awesome. I’d love to talk to him in the morning, before he goes to school, if there’s time?”
“It’ll be early for you.”
“I’ll be up. It’s fine.”
“Then we’ll do that.”
He yawned. “I was up at dark o’clock to do my annual fit test. So I want you to crawl into bed and tell me about the birthday plans and anything else that I’ve missed in the last few days.”
“Just like that?”
“Just like that. Can we switch to video?”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Sure.”
She ended the call and switched to Skype. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, which she found really distracting. And she wasn’t wearing makeup and her hair was a mess, but on her preview screen it didn’t look that bad. And it didn’t really look like Zander was perusing her outfit, either. His gaze was locked on hers. “Hi.”
She wiggled her fingers and gave him a small smile.
“Birthday party?” he prompted, and she nodded. She told him about the ten kids that would descend on her place in another week, a few days after Eric’s actual birthday. They talked until they were both yawning.
“I don’t want to say goodbye,” Faith whispered, her head on the pillow.
Zander gave her an almost smile, but his eyes were impossibly warm and full of love. “Then just say goodnight.”
“Night,” she murmured. “I love you.”
“Love you too, babe. Always.”
— —
Zander’s phone rang at half past five the next morning. He jackknifed out of bed and hit answer. “Minelli.”
Eric’s little giggle made the heart attack totally worth it. “Hi Zander.”
“Hey, bud. Getting ready for school?”
“Yep. You back from army work?”
Zander shook the cotton out of his head and tried to figure that one out. “Pardon?”
“Mommy said you went to army work.”
Ah. “Yeah, I’m back at my base.”
“I went to my base yesterday, too.”
“Did you?”
Eric explained how they’d gone to the park and met Dani, and on the way back, he’d stopped in at his spy base and done some training.
Zander lay back down on his bed and listened to the story. It was fantastical and innocent.
Never grow up, Eric
. He was perfect just the way he was.
“What kind of tank do you drive?” Eric asked.
Zander held off on the lecture about how infantrymen didn’t drive tanks, that was the artillery. “If we go in an armoured vehicle, it’s called a LAV. Not a tank, and I don’t drive it, but close enough.”
“We have spy LAVs. I think we do, anyway.”
“That’s great. Do you by any chance have spy rations? Because if I get cabbage rolls again, I’m going to scream. So if you have a better food distributor, maybe we could tell the Canadian Forces.”
Eric giggled. “Okay.”
“Okay.” Zander grinned. “Time for school now?”
“Yeah.”
“Miss you.”
“Miss you, too.”
He heard that little voice over and over again all day, and it kept him calm until he got home and got to hear it again.
He was just marking time now. Worst kind of soldiering, but he had trouble caring.
His heart was in Tobermory, as simple as that.
If duty actually required his attention, he’d shift it, of course. But as long as he could get through his tasks on auto-pilot, he’d leave his focus where it belonged.
When Faith called back that night, after Eric was racked out, the last thing he wanted to talk about was work.
“Tell me about your writing instead,” he said as he settled on his bed. Talking to Faith had become his anchor. He’d talked more in the last two months than in the twenty years before that, and it felt surprisingly good.
Sharing for the win.
But tonight he just wanted her to share.
“I don’t know, how much do you want to know?”
“All of it. What are you writing?”
“Well, that book that I was writing while you were here, that’s done, and I’ve gotten edits back on it. I added…” She stopped and blushed.
“Added?”
She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip. “Um…”
“Is it dirty? I approve.”
She laughed. “Not really. A little. I added a new guy to the story, and instead of him being a secondary character, I think I’m shifting the series into the urban fantasy romance category.”
“So Vera actually gets to keep a guy now?”
She stared at the screen. “Have you been reading my books?”
He grinned. “You’re a good writer.”
She squeaked and buried her face in the blanket.
“Faith?”
“Go away!”
He laughed and she peeked one eye up at the screen. “How many books have you read?”
“All of them. Can I have an advance copy of the new one? Who is this guy, anyway?”
— —
Faith couldn’t look Zander in the eye. “He’s…well, I started writing him that night we met in Greta’s.”
“The notes you were taking while we talked?” He sounded…proud.
She glanced up. “Yes?”
“What’s his name?”
“Deacon.”
He made a noncommittal noise and rubbed his thumb along his jaw. “Does he have the power to make Vera do things like…give him a blow job?”
So he’d read the second book, with the wizard who cast an uninhibited spell on Vera, great.
He winked at her. “I’m definitely hoping that the next dirty blow job Vera gives someone will be Deacon. I have to admit I don’t much like the idea of her with anyone else.”
Oh God, she was going to die from embarrassment. “She’s only just met Deacon. Anything she did before he stormed into her life can’t be held against her.”