“Hey, unrelated question for you…”
“Sure, what’s up?”
“Are you at all worried that I’m losing it?”
“No.” He was worried about her, but not about that. “I scared myself.”
“I know.”
“Have you done that? Have you ever scared yourself?” He was scaring himself right then by the way he was reacting to her. And the fact that it was the middle of the night, he had to work in the morning and he wanted nothing more than to be on the next flight to Indiana. “Yes.”
He had to get her into bed with him. And be done with this. Assuming she wanted to go to bed with him.
He’d never had a problem with that before.
“Pushing yourself like you did tonight is how you know how much you have in you to give.” He started to talk to shut himself up. “It’s like working out. You go until you drop and then you get up and go some more and somehow the process makes you a stronger athlete. You were exercising your strength as a detective.”
She sighed. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.” It was time to hang up. To separate from her and get on with the business of his life.
At least until she was actually in town…
“By the way, are you staying here with me next weekend? When you come for the wedding.” He might as well get a start on things. “Since I’m your ride…” The tag-on was his pathetic attempt to pacify the part of him that knew better than to make the offer in the first place.
“I don’t want to put you out.”
“Turnaround is fair play.” He had to offer. Because he’d accepted her offer and stayed with her in Aurora. His mother had taught him manners. “It’ll save you the cost of a hotel.”
“The hotels in the tourist district are rather expensive.” She’d stayed there before.
“There aren’t any decent hotels anywhere else in this town.” The city had grown tremendously in the past twenty years, but it just wasn’t big enough to support an upscale economy hotel for nontourists.
“And I sure can’t have you driving back and forth to Boston.” She’d stayed in Boston during her first trip to Comfort Cove. She’d rented a car at the airport to drive herself back and forth.
He’d let her do that—even though she’d been in town to help him with a case.
The second trip, she’d rented a car and stayed in the tourist district. He’d let her do that, too, without offering his hospitality.
“We don’t know how late the reception is going to go.” He continued to kid himself that there was an altruistic bone in his body.
“That’s right.” She sounded as though she was falling asleep. Maybe, with any luck, she wouldn’t remember this conversation in the morning. After the drugs wore off. “Thank you, then. Yes, I’ll stay with you.”
“Good. Now get some rest.”
“I don’t think I have any choice.”
She sounded like a petulant child and he chuckled. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“’K. Night, Ramsey.”
“Night, sweetie.”
The blood drained from his face. His hands froze.
Where had the endearment come from? He didn’t use them.
And Ramsey prayed that Lucy had already been asleep before he’d made that last mammoth mistake.