“Oh, I’m sure. You see how small town my life is compared to where you’re from,” I joked. “How cute and Southern it is here.”
“I saw where you got your strength and your beautiful mind and that quick wit. I’ve seen the love your parents have for each other even though they come from completely different places. I see how your sister hero-worships me.”
I nudged him. “She does not.”
“She does. I’d never seen you outside of my element. It’s nice to see the Natalie Bishop who has no expectations on her shoulders. The one who can navigate this world as well as mine.”
“I do not navigate either very well,” I told him honestly.
He pulled my lips to his. “You’re very, very wrong. You move between worlds so seamlessly; sometimes, it scares me.”
“Bad scary?” I asked against his lips.
He shook his head. “Never with you.”
“That’s good. I like seeing you dressed down and just hanging out here. No stuffy suits or Upper East Side lifestyle. No Hamptons. None of your friends. Just us.”
He nodded and then leaned his forehead against mine. “Me too.”
“We should do this more often.” I closed my eyes with a sigh of relief.
“Natalie?”
“Hmm?”
“I love you.”
My heart skipped a beat. Those words. The three tiny words that I’d died to hear him say. And been terrified to hear. That I’d rejected the last time we were in Charleston. Even though I’d ached to hear them.
My breath released, and I threaded our fingers together. “I love you, too.”
Then he kissed me, and I forgot the boat and the waves and the whole universe. Penn Kensington loved me. He was mine.
Chapter 24
Natalie
We said good-bye to Melanie and my parents the next morning. Amy promised to come visit us in the city, which I thought was secretly so that she could see Enzo, but I was okay with that, too. I wanted Amy to be happy.
Even though Penn and I had been together all weekend, I dropped my bag off at my place and then went back to Penn’s to stay the night. It was much easier to celebrate being in love when we had a huge king-size bed to enjoy.
And it was worse, seeing him get up, put on a suit, and head to work. This whole work thing was for the birds. I didn’t even want to think about my work. Caroline couldn’t believe I was turning down seven figures because of my ex-boyfriend, but considering the restraining order I had out, I didn’t think that I even could sign with Warren. Probably a conflict of interest. I’d promised her another manuscript to send out. Possibly another pen name. Though I was sick to my stomach, thinking about sending out my literary novels under any other name than my own. It made it more difficult to work on.
Still, I booted up my computer, which I’d neglected all weekend. And there was my research on the Anselin-Maguire case. I’d forgotten all about it in the bliss of the weekend. But here it was all over again.
I closed out of my manuscript and got to digging. There had to be something here. A reason that Lewis was meeting with people at random house parties and closing business deals after dinner. That wasn’t normal. No matter how I’d pushed it aside in the moment.
I read through the first three pages of information on Anselin, and nothing came up. I added Anselin and Warren and searched to see if there were any matches. Another couple of pages passed by. Apparently, they did a lot of business. Or at least, there was a lot of talk about it. It was the next page that I finally stopped to read through.
It was an article about the acquisition of a large tract of land in a minority neighborhood. The newspaper celebrated the purchase by Warren and highlighted the agreement not to displace the people within the area. Instead, Warren had plans to revitalize the area while keeping the old residents in it.
It was strange how much the newspaper kissed their ass. Purchasing land in a low-income area and revitalizing it was definitely a thing to celebrate. But it also sounded a bit too much like…propaganda to me. No one did anything just for the altruistic good feels. There was a reason that Lewis had purchased the neighborhood.
I had a bad feeling about this.
Lewis had bought my building when he wanted to get me a good deal for the apartment. But it wasn’t normal in New York to keep prices low just for the fun of it. Why would he have bought that land? What did it have that interested him? If he wasn’t going to do something to make more money, then I wagered he needed it for something else.
I searched out the low-income neighborhood that the article said Warren had purchased and found the apartments listed for rent were twice as much as I was paying currently. My eyes bulged. That wasn’t sustainable on the Upper West. How could people afford that outside of Manhattan?