happening,” he said, chuckling as he cocked a brow at me. “Not unless you want me to fire you, of course.”
“No, I don’t want that.”
Before Paris—even in Paris—being fired would’ve been like just getting confirmation that I wasn’t meant for this role.
Things were different now, though. I was here, ready, and excited for it if I could really keep being myself while doing it. Dane was the big boss now too, and he’d told me time and again that he preferred the real me to the fake me.
“You’re sure you want to stay?” he asked, looking at me intently as he gripped his glass in his hand. “I won’t blame you if you still decide you want to leave.”
“I won’t want to leave,” I said firmly, taking a deep breath through my nostrils.
I hadn’t told him about Rick’s visit yet, but this felt like a good time to work it in. If I didn’t do it now, my brother might just beat me to the punch. Not literally, hopefully, but that wasn’t entirely out of the question.
Reaching across the table, I caught his hand after he’d put his glass down. “I know I kept saying I might leave, but I’ve never really wanted to. At times, I thought about it because I thought it would be for the best. While at other times, it was because I thought Jefferson was going to ask me to.”
He folded my hand into his. “What about the homesickness?”
“It’s much better,” I said softly. “It has been since I realized that there’s a little bit of home wherever you are.”
Surprise flashed in his eyes, but he tightened his grip on my hand and smiled at me. “Funny. That’s the same way I feel about you.”
“I thought it might be,” I said, then winced before I told him the rest. “Since I was quite sure about it, I might’ve told Rick about us this afternoon.”
He blinked rapidly. “Rick? As in, your brother, Rick?”
“Yep.” I tried to grin, but I was pretty sure it ended up looking like a grimace instead. “He came to surprise me because you’d told him I’d been feeling homesick. We got to talking and telling him felt like the right thing to do.”
He was silent for a beat, then he nodded. “What did he say?”
“Wellll…” I closed my eyes, then smiled wide when I opened them again. “He said he knew it was going to happen. He also said that he doesn’t need me to tell you what he’ll do to you if you hurt me.”
“Well played,” he said after a minute, exhaling deeply before he started laughing. “You really had me going for a while there. I thought you were going to tell me that he’d been waiting at my apartment with a bat and a date to rearrange my teeth.”
“Nah, he was a lot more creative than that,” I teased. “If you don’t hurt me though, you’ll never have to find out what all of his ideas were.”
“Luckily, I’ve never planned on hurting you,” he said, a little more seriously now than he’d been before. “I’m glad you told him. Jefferson knows too, by the way. I didn’t tell him, but I didn’t have to.”
“What did he say?” I asked cautiously, but a part of me was flooded with relief there were no real obstacles left between us.
Dane shrugged, toying with the second finger on my left hand. “He told me that we’d better invite him to the wedding.”
I nearly choked on the sip of wine I’d been taking, the noises coming out of me not human at all. “Are you serious?”
“Yep. He also said we shouldn’t waste any time.” He smirked at me, but even that smug look didn’t make him any less handsome.
The candlelight made his blond hair look like it was glowing, the flames flickered in his eyes, and the shadows did wonderful things with his chiseled features. I wouldn’t let myself get caught swooning over him when he was already looking so smug, though.
“Where’s the ring then?” I asked. “You weren’t planning on proposing without one, were you?”
“I figured we should start with something simpler and take it from there.” He flashed me a smile. “The last time I was on my knees for someone was when I was working in that shoe store when I was sixteen. I’m not going to try it now, but will you spend the next few months traveling the world with me?”