“Uh, thanks. And thanks for the real estate tip. I’ll keep that in mind.”
Maybe people with no parents really liked discussing other people’s parental problems, I thought, as I watched Will go up to the young guy who was managing the hotel desk, lean an elbow against it, and say, “Hello. We were wondering if we could have the room number of one of your—”
Whoa. I darted forward and snatched Will by the arm.
“Nope,” I said to the guy behind the desk. “Nope, no, we weren’t. We’re fine. Have a good night.”
Both Will and the front desk guy looked startled.
“Very well, miss,” the front desk guy said. “Have a nice night, yourself.”
As I hustled Will out of the lobby and through the living and dining rooms, out into the courtyard, he whispered, “What are you doing?”
“What are you doing? You can’t just go up and ask the guy at the front desk for Garrett’s room number. He might tip him off that we’re on our way! We’ve got to be subtle about this.”
Will looked taken aback. “But then how else are we going to get his room number?”
“I already know his room number,” I said. I had my arm wrapped around his as I hustled him around the edge of the pool. “I checked into this place at the same time he did. Don’t you remember? I was standing there in the airport yesterday morning holding a sign with both of your names on it. I know you saw me. You looked right at me and dropped your bag in fright.”
Will froze, nearly catapulting me into the pool, because while he’d stopped walking, I’d kept on going, and my arm was still hooked through his.
Not anymore, however. Now we stood in the middle of the courtyard, which was empty of guests as well as hotel employees, and totally silent except for the gurgle of the hot tub and the musical chirps of crickets and frogs.
“I wasn’t frightened to see you,” Will insisted. “I was simply a little surprised.”
“Well, I don’t know why. You’re on the festival board. You knew I was coming.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know what time your flight got in. And I didn’t know you’d done that to your hair.”
My hand went reflexively to my head. “I thought you said you liked my hair this way.”
“I did. I do.” The only light in the courtyard was from the lamps outside the doors to everyone’s rooms, and of course the pool lights, which gave everything a blue, out-of-this-world glow. Still, I could see that Will looked upset—upset enough that he’d stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers, as if he were trying to stuff down something else … his emotions, maybe. “It was just a shock. You looked so different from when I’d last seen you … not in a bad way, just different. I’d heard from a few people that you’d been upset about what I said in the Times”—people? What people? It could only have been Rosie, who’d probably run into his agent in Aruba or wherever it was all agents hung out when they weren’t in New York, making deals. I was going to kill her—“and I was worried—”
“About what? That I’d dyed my hair black because of you?”
Actually, I had, although not directly. Midnight Black matched the way I’d been feeling for months about my career, my love life, and most of all, Will Price.
“No! No, not at all.” At my derisive eye roll, he said, “Well, all right, maybe. I knew I had to apologize, and I wanted to do it right. I’d been rehearsing what I was going to say when I saw you. I didn’t expect our first meeting to be in the Little Bridge Island Airport, though, so I’ll admit, I ran. It was cowardly, but you looked”—he swallowed—“angry.”
I tried to suppress a grin, remembering how I’d been about to spit on the whiteboard and erase his name from it. Then something he’d said hit me. “Wait a minute. You rehearsed what to say when you saw me? On the beach the night of the meet-and-greet—you practiced that?”
He winced. “I had a speech written out, exactly what I was going to say when I saw you. Only then you brought up Chloe—”
Now I could no longer suppress a grin. “And the fact that she said I’m her favorite writer?”
“That wasn’t what I thought you were going to say she told you. I thought you were going to say she’d told you—”
“—how you hadn’t noticed she had dyslexia her whole life. I know.”
He winced. “Oh.”
“I didn’t put it together until today, when you told me on the boat. But I get it now.”
“I told you. I’ve just never been very good with words. Not spoken words. I’ve always been better at writing. The things I want to say—somehow, they just never seem to come out right unless I’m typing them. Then it feels like I get everything right.”
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion.” When he only stared at me in confusion, I added, “You can’t possibly consider having two people fall in love only to have one of them get shot at their own wedding ‘getting everything right.’”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “You really are reading my book, aren’t you?”
“Of course I’m reading it. But I can’t say I’m finding it very cathartic, or whatever I’m supposed to be feeling. What kind of twist is that supposed to be? How can Melanie’s husband not be dead? Johnny saw his body. He was very, very dead. But now somehow he’s risen from the dead and shot Johnny at his own wedding?”
Out from those pockets came his hands, big and stretched wide open, as entreating as his dark eyes. “I can’t believe you’re actually reading it.”
“I still have about thirty pages to go. But I don’t understand what’s going to happen in the next thirty pages of a book where the first-person narrator has been shot dead.”
“You do know what, Jo.” One of those large hands reached out to clasp me by the wrist. “The emotional journey all protagonists take in every book: from being someone flawed, who’s made mistakes—maybe serious mistakes—to being someone slightly less flawed.” His other hand reached out to clasp me by my other wrist. “Someone who’s learned from their mistakes and only wants forgiveness, and has maybe done one or two things to earn it … not only from the reader, but from their potential love interest, as well. Does that make sense to you?”
I blinked at him. I had to blink, because my eyes had suddenly filled with tears. I couldn’t believe it, but Will Price—whose soppy books I’d been making fun of for years—had finally managed to make me cry.
“You’re not talking about Johnny, are you?”
“Actually, I am,” he said, as he pulled me toward him. “But also … maybe not. Because maybe I’m Johnny.”
And then—don’t ask me how—Will was kissing me again. Not just kissing me, but saying my name over and over—“Jo, Jo, Jo”—like one of Kellyjean’s incantations.
But I didn’t mind, because the sound of my name on his lips was an elixir, as intoxicating as the smell of the night-blooming jasmine hanging heavily in the air. I was kissing him back, my whole body feeling as if it were on fire. I was standing on tiptoe, my hands around his neck now that he’d released them to wrap his arms around my waist, pulling me so close that I could feel enough of him through the thin material of the suit he was wearing to be pretty sure—but not one hundred percent yet—that he was wearing boxers and not briefs. This was something I knew I was going to have to get to the bottom of, and quickly, when something occurred to me, and I tore my mouth from his.