Collision

  “Can I see you tonight?”

  Her eyes widened. “Pardon?”

  “Can I see you tonight?”

  “Cabot, I assumed you’d—”

  “You assumed wrong.”

  “Bollocks. You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

  “Yeah, I do. You were going to say that you figured that the information you shared about yourself changed my mind about us and that I’d moved on with my life and completely forgotten about you. But it didn’t, and I haven’t, and I want to see you tonight.”

  She looked down at the ground. “Oliver’s got the rest of the day planned. I don’t know when I’ll be back. And besides, it hasn’t been thirty days yet.”

  “Screw the thirty days.”

  “Cabot—”

  “It’s been twenty-five. Close enough.”

  “I’ll see you on Monday.” Turning on her heels, she was gone.

  Later that day, just as I was about to approach the front desk and ask for Kei’s room number, I saw her getting onto the elevator with Oliver and several other people.

  I ran through the lobby and squeezed through the doors as they closed.

  “Room for one more?”

  When Kei saw that it was me, she tried to hide behind the man in front of her.

  “Excuse me.” I shoved through the men and slid behind her and up against the wall. I was so close that I could see her hair move when I exhaled.

  My hands shook, and the inside of my chest vibrated so fast that it felt like my lungs were flapping like birds wings taking off in flight.

  “New clothes?” I asked.

  “Oliver and Mariah purchased them for me.”

  “You look amazing.”

  “Zip it,” she whispered angrily.

  “I e-mailed you a dozen times after I left,” I whispered back.

  Oliver glanced at us over his shoulder and then started talking to the men surrounding him.

  I moved closer and placed my face between her right ear and the wall of the elevator. “I’ve thought about you every day, practically nonstop.”

  “Shh.” She reached over and slapped the palm of her hand against my forehead and pushed my face away from hers.

  I leaned right back in.

  “Oh, for the love of Pete,” she groaned.

  “Why didn’t you answer my e-mails ?”

  “We agreed not to contact one another.”

  “Not true. You agreed.”

  “We needed to get back to reality.”

  “What we have is reality.” My whisper had grown in volume to the point that Oliver noticed and started talking even louder.

  She turned a little to face me but didn’t look me in the eye. “Cabot, this is not the time or the place to discuss this.”

  “Maybe if you would’ve answered your e-mails, I wouldn’t have to discuss it here.”

  The elevator buzzed, and the door opened.

  “Eighth floor,” Oliver announced. “Kei, this is you.”

  She squeezed through the men and exited. I was right behind her.

  “Cabot,” someone asked, “didn’t you get the penthouse?”

  “Yep. But uh…uh…she’s going to interview me for the video…and…”

  She hurried to her room while I lied to the group of men until the door closed back and then chased after her.

  “Come on. Come on,” she muttered as she fumbled to try and get the key card into the slot and the door opened before I caught up with her.

  She failed.

  As soon as the door unlocked, I opened it, grabbed her around the waist, lifted her a couple of inches off the ground, and carried her inside. It wasn’t something I’d planned, but in my excitement to see her, it was all I could think to do. I couldn’t wait to be alone with her, to pick up where we left off. When the door shut behind us, I put her down, spun her around to face me, and hugged her.

  “God, I’m glad to see you.”

  When I pulled her to me, her body was stiff and her arms hung at her sides.

  Refusing to let her go, I tightened my grip around her body.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Have your feelings changed from what you told me back in Asheville?” I asked.

  “No.”

  I finally let go of her and took a step back. “Then what’s the problem?”

  “I suppose there isn’t one. I’m highly shocked. That’s all. Highly, highly shocked.”

  “Shocked is good. As long as your feelings haven’t changed, then I’ll take shocked.”

  “My feelings haven’t changed, not a smidgen.”

  “Good, ’cause I wasted money on your plane ticket if you would’ve ended up saying no.”

  “My ticket?” She shoved me away and threw her hands on her hips. “Wait. You arranged all of this?”

  “Of course.”

  “When?”

  “The day I left. You were trying to walk away from me, but I set my mind to winning you over, so I’ve been working on it ever since. I told you that I didn’t give up easily.”

  “How did you get Oliver to go along, or my parents?”

  “Well, first, I had to swear within an inch of my life that I wouldn’t take advantage of you or do anything inappropriate. I even had to agree to have Millie with us as sort of a chaperone. She gets here later tonight. Then, after some begging and pleading, Oliver said yes and then set out to convince your parents. How he did that I have no idea. You’ll have to ask him.”

  “I can’t believe Oliver even agreed.”

  “To him, I’m still Cab, and Cab gets what Cab wants.”

  “And Cab wants me?”

  “Cab and Cabot both do.” I reached into my pocket, pulled out my cell phone and dialed the phone, and then kissed her on the forehead.

  “Hello?” Andrew answered.

  “Go ahead and move her stuff.”

  “Right now?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll be right there.”

  “What was that about?” she asked.

  “You’re moving to my floor.”

  “This is moving too fast, Cabot. Moving in together is not an option.”

  “We’re not moving in together. I said you were moving to my floor.”

  “Oh.”

  I headed for the door and then stopped, turned back around, and grabbed her and hugged her. “You won’t be sorry you said yes. I promise. This is going to happen, and it’s going to be great.”

  Andrew arrived, grabbed the bags, and led us out into the hallway and onto the elevator. Kei stood between us and listened to Andrew give her instructions.

  “Here’s your key. You need to have it to access the upper floors,” he explained.

  Her hands were shaking. “Upper floors? Okay.”

  “The best thing to do is wait until everyone else is off the elevator and then insert your key and push the button. That way, nobody knows what floor you’re going to.”

  “But don’t you know?”

  “I’m paid to know, and I’m paid to keep it a secret.”

  “We’re not nobbing,” she announced.

  Andrew looked over at me with a confused expression on his face. I shrugged.

  He looked back at her. “Excuse me?”

  “I don’t know why I just told you that. I guess I felt you needed to know. Because we aren’t…nobbing.”

  “I never assumed you were… nobbing.”

  “Really? Thank you.” She smiled at him, looked over at me and then looked back over at him. “But still, just so you know, we aren’t nobbing. And we won’t be.”

  He nodded. “Understood.”

  “I’m not that kind of girl.”

  “I understand.”

  “Does all of this make it appear like I am?”

  He looked down at her and smiled. “No. Take a deep breath. All’s going to be fine.”

  She inhaled.

  The elevator door finally opened. She stepped out and looked up and down the long corrid
or. There were only two doors on the entire floor, and they were at opposite ends of the hallway.

  “Fred is on that end,” Andrew said, pointing to our left, “and you, Daphne, are down here on the other end.”

  “Fred and Daphne?”

  “Those are our code names while we’re here,” I said. “The hotel staff only knows you by that name. So if anyone asked if Kei Sallee was staying at the hotel, they would only have record of you being on the other floor.”

  “Brilliant. But who are Fred and Daphne really?”

  “They’re characters from Scooby Doo.”

  “Scooby who?”

  “It’s a television show. Daphne has red hair.”

  “Oh. Another carrot top.”

  We followed behind Andrew as he carried her bags to the door.

  “I’ll give you my room number and my cell phone number,” he said. “You call me if you need anything. I’m a floor below you, and I can be here in less than a minute.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Thanks, Andrew. Just set her stuff down right inside the door.” I grabbed her hand and pulled her into the room. “This is the penthouse.”

  “Okay.” She looked back and watched as Andrew left the two of us alone. “This place is enormous. We could fit twenty-five Ugandan clans in this room and still have room to move around.”

  “Imagine being in a room like this all the time and all alone.”

  “I’d rather not.”

  “We’ve got the entire floor to ourselves. Nobody else can even get access to it, and there are no cameras in the hallway. We can come and go as much as we want, and nobody will know the difference. Oh, and did you see that hallway out there? Plenty of room for yard ball. Course, we’ll have to change the name to hall ball.”

  She walked around in awe. “It’s the most beautiful room I’ve ever seen. I cannot believe you’ve orchestrated all of this.”

  “I guess it’s what guys do when they’re in love. They orchestrate things.”

  She turned back to look at me. “I haven’t seen a smile on your face as large as the one you’re wearing now since you were holding Innocent the first time. You’re genuinely pleased that I’m here, aren’t you?”

  “I’m the happiest guy on the planet right now.”

  “Because I’m here?”

  I laughed. “All because you’re here.”

  I placed my hands on her shoulders and then let them trail down her arms until I gripped my hands in hers. “You look freaked out. Are you okay?”

  “I-I’m a little freaked out. I think I’m just overwhelmed with all of it: the trip, the orchestrating, the room, the large man on the lift. I blurted that we weren’t nobbing. I mean, how ridiculous is that?”

  I laughed. “Yeah, that part was pretty funny. I don’t think he knew how to respond.”

  “I’m acting completely batty right now. This is very much outside what I’m accustomed to.”

  “Anything I can do to help?”

  “Just tell me I’m not making a mistake. I’ll choose to believe you, honestly, I will.”

  “You’re not making a mistake.” I dropped her hands and cupped her face in my hands. “I promise you, Kei. We’re no mistake.”

  She took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Aces.”

  “Okay.” I rested my forehead on hers. “Come on. I want to show you something.”

  “Uh…”

  “Something completely innocent.”

  “All right then.”

  I grabbed her hand and led her down the hallway and around a corner.

  “Tada!”

  There sat a pool table in front of a large window that overlooked the Tuscan village below.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “Nope. Just like Asheville; except with a view.” I grabbed two sticks and handed one out to her. “Want to play?”

  “As long as you keep your stick to yourself.”

  “Aw, she pulls out the ol’ stick joke.” I laughed. “That’s my girl.”

  She leaned over the table to line up her shot, and as she did, I walked up next to her, leaned over, and kissed her on the back of the neck.

  “And life returns to normal,” I announced, “just like I’d hoped.”

  “Normal? Cabot, between my past and your present, there’s nothing about us that’s normal. It’ll be a blasted miracle if this coupling lasts a week.”

  “Then it’s a good thing I believe in miracles. You can borrow my faith for a while if you need to.”

  She struck the ball with the cue and watched the balls scatter around the table.

  “Nice shot.”

  “Thank you.”

  I walked around the table, looking for a shot of my own. “What do you think?”

  She left her stick perched against the side of the pool table and walked up beside me.

  “Do you think I have a shot?” I asked.

  “Sure.”

  “Which one? The red?”

  She removed the stick from my hand and laid it on the table.

  “Wait. It’s my move,” I protested.

  “I’m about to ask you a question, and I need you to be one hundred percent honest with me.”

  “Okay,” I said cautiously.

  “You once lectured me about what a true snog should be.”

  “I did.”

  “Has the time that’s passed or the revelation about my past changed the way you see me or change how you want to…oh, what am I saying?”

  I tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “Not in the least. Trust me. I’m having to work very hard at keeping myself from being all over you right now.”

  “Really?”

  “Really.”

  “Well, don’t try too hard. I mean, it has been twenty-five days. I’d rather like my toes to tingle again.”

  “I made your toes tingle?”

  “You made parts of my body tingle I didn’t even know existed.”

  “Really? Well then let’s see if we can do that again.”

  “I would appreciate that.”

  I slid my arms around her, picked her up off the floor, turned, and set her on the pool table.

  “I think I’m going to enjoy this.”

  “Oh, I’m certain I will,” she whispered as I moved toward her.

  C H A P T E R

  31

  Hours later, we were lying on the couch in the living room, her head on my chest. She’d fallen asleep, and I was flipping through channels on the television, although I wasn’t really watching it. I was thinking—thinking about how long it had taken to get to that point, thinking about how much time I’d spent wishing we’d be just like we were, completely alone, completely comfortable, and completely together.

  “Did you know that I’ve never actually watched an entire television show?” she suddenly said.

  “You’re kidding?”

  “No. As a child, I wasn’t allowed. My father didn’t let my mother or me watch television. The boys could, but we couldn’t.”

  “Didn’t you say you used to watch princess movies as a kid, or was that after all that?”

  “No. It was during. Every so often, my father and brothers would all go off somewhere together. When they did, my mother would sneak and let me watch a princess movie.”

  “Why only princess movies, do you think?”

  “I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed, but most princesses live pretty miserable lives. It isn’t until the end of the movie that someone saves them and they get to go off and live happily ever after.”

  “Is that right? I hadn’t thought about it.”

  She pushed off my chest and sat up. The skin of her left cheek had a crease imbedded in it from a wrinkle in my shirt.

  “Snow White was a princess, but both of her birth parents were dead and her evil stepmother, the queen, hated her. She was forced into servitude. Then the queen tried to have her killed, but Snow White escaped into the woods and lived there with the dwarfs and the animals. Cinderel
la—”

  “Had an evil stepmother,” I said. “She was forced to do all the housework and was mistreated.”

  “That’s right. Both of her birth parents were dead, and her only friends?”

  “Animals.”

  “How do you know all this?” she asked.

  “Three sisters, remember?”

  “Oh yes. Now, Aurora wasn’t a maid or mistreated necessarily, but she lived a very lonely life. She lived alone in the woods with no friends other than three fairies. Oh, and she had no parents. It was her aunt who looked after her.”

  “What’s with all the orphans? I hadn’t ever realized that until now.”

  “Makes a better story, I presume.”

  “What about the mermaid one?”

  “Ariel. No mother. She was a princess, but she didn’t like the life she was called to live. She wanted more for herself, but her father controlled her life and forbid her to explore any life that was different than what he had in mind for her.”

  “But he did love her, and he ends up coming around in the end.”

  “True. He was overly protective of her because he knew how evil the world outside his protection could be. And then there’s Belle, my personal favorite. Again, no mother. Belle wasn’t noble at all. There was nothing special about her. Her father was odd, and everyone around her thought she was batty. She lived a lonely life with only books and her imagination to keep her happy.”

  “And your mother thought all this would encourage you how?”

  She moved away from me, put her legs between mine, and rested her feet on my chest. Her head lay on the armrest on the opposite side of the couch.

  “I was a girl born of noble birth, to some degree.”

  “How?”

  “My father was the heir to his family business. We can get more into that later.”

  “Okay.”

  “So, by name alone, I should have lived a life of fortune, so to speak.”

  “But you had an evil parent.”

  “Yes, I had an evil parent. I was forced into servitude. I maintained the house. My father expected it to be immaculate.”