books.” He nodded slowly, a smirk playing at his mouth. “It’s true. And I don’t need you to say it back. Not yet. In fact, please don’t. I want you to say it in your own time, when you’re ready. And if you don’t love me yet, don’t worry, I’ll win you over.” He rested his forehead against mine as we swayed.
Oh God. I loved him. Maybe it was reckless and foolish, and too damned soon, but I couldn’t help it. My heart was his. He’d won me over so completely that I couldn’t imagine a single day without him. “Noah, I l—”
He kissed me quiet, stopping my declaration. Then he carried me upstairs and made love to me so thoroughly, there wasn’t a single inch of my skin that didn’t know his hands, his mouth, his tongue.
By the time the sun came up, we were both famished, drunk on a cocktail of orgasms and sleep deprivation as we kissed our way downstairs like a pair of teenagers, staying as quiet as possible so we didn’t wake Mom.
We were a total cliché—Noah wearing last night’s dress pants while I’d hastily buttoned his shirt over nothing but a pair of boy-cut briefs. I didn’t care. I was in love with Noah Morelli, and I was going to make him pancakes—or eggs. Whatever was quicker and got us back into bed.
He kissed me deep and long in the foyer, tugging me toward the kitchen.
“What is that?” I drew back at the sound of rustling paper coming from the office.
Noah lifted his head, his eyes narrowing at the slight gap in the office doors. “I shut those last night before the party. Wait here.” He swept me behind his back, then strode silently to the French doors, pushing one open carefully to look inside. “What the hell are you doing?” he growled, disappearing inside.
I followed, racing through the open door.
It took a second to figure it out. Mom sat in Gran’s chair, her cell phone poised above the desk, a shirt box open to her left and a small pile of papers in front of her.
She was scanning the manuscript.
Chapter Twenty-Six
May 1942
Ipswich, England
William cried, and Scarlett rocked him gently, swinging him side to side as the air-raid sirens wailed above them. The shelter was full and dimly lit, but she imagined her expression mirrored those around her. There were a few children huddled in the corner, playing a game—for the younger ones, this had become routine, just another fact of life.
The adults passed around reassuring smiles that were anything but. The air raids had picked up in the last week, the Germans bombing city after city in retaliation for the bombings in Cologne. Though the raids had never ceased completely, Scarlett had grown complacent over the last few months, and though this wasn’t the first time she found herself in a shelter, waiting to survive, or not, this was the first time William had.
She’d known fear before. Felt it in those moments the hangar had exploded back in Middle Wallop, or the times Jameson came home late, or not for days, while they escorted British bombers. But this fear, this terror clenching her throat with an icy fist was a new level, a new torture in this war. It was no longer only her life that hung in the balance, or even Jameson’s, but that of her son’s.
William would be six months old in a couple of days. Six months, and all he’d known was war.
“I’m sure they’ll give us the all clear in just a moment,” an older woman told her with a kind smile.
“Certainly,” Scarlett replied, adjusting William to her other hip and pressing a kiss to the top of his head through his hat.
Ipswich was a natural target, Scarlett knew that. But they’d been lucky so far.
The sirens stopped, and there was a hum of collective relief throughout the long tube that served as their shelter underground.
The ground hadn’t shaken, though that wasn’t always a sure way to tell if they’d been hit, only that they hadn’t been hit nearby.
“There aren’t as many children as I would have expected,” Scarlett said to the older woman, mostly to distract herself.
“They built shelters at the school,” she explained with a proud nod. “They can’t fit all the children, naturally, but they go to school in shifts now, taking only as many children as can fit at once. It’s thrown more than a few schedules into upheaval, but…” She trailed off.
“But the children