All the Way (Romancing Manhattan 1)

“Take a break.” I show her the dessert and hold a chair out for her. “Join me for something sweet.”

“You feed me all the time,” she says as she cracks into her dessert. “I haven’t eaten this good in years.”

“It’s just crème brûlée and coffee.”

“And it’s delicious.” She takes another bite and then a sip of her coffee. “I should probably go home after this.”

“Why?”

She stops and meets my gaze, her spoon in her mouth. “Because I live there?”

“Do you have something pressing to do?”

“No.”

“Is it locked up?”

“Of course.”

“I want you to stay.” I offer her a bite on my spoon and she takes it. “I’d like to get naked with you again. Hold you while you sleep.”

I take a bite.

“I’d like to be with you tonight.”

“You’re not sick of me already?”

I take a moment to answer because I don’t want to sound too eager. “No. I don’t see a time in my near future that I’ll be sick of you.”

“Well, then I’ll stay.”

She takes a bite as if she’s just told me that she’d like another cup of coffee. As if it’s not a big deal at all.

Maybe it’s not a big deal for her, but it’s not small for me. I don’t sleep over with women. I don’t invite them into my home for meals and games and sex.

I don’t do this, yet I can’t stay away from London.

“Thank you.”

She finishes her crème brûlée and then smiles at me. “You’re welcome. Now, if I beat you at pinball, you have to stay naked for the rest of the evening.”

“What if I win?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, you’re not going to win.”

I laugh as I join her at the machine. “If you’re going to keep cheating, I’m not making this bet.”

“I don’t cheat,” she insists. “And you might want to go to the doctor to get your equilibrium checked out because you almost fell.”

“Or, you know, you almost pushed me down.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I wake up and reach for her in the dark, but the sheets are cool where she was lying not long ago.

She’s not here.

I sit up in my bed and rub my hands over my face, then look around the room and pause when I find her.

She’s sitting on the floor in front of the glass door that leads out to my deck, her knees pulled up to her chest and arms wrapped around them, a blanket wrapped around her. Her nose is practically pressed to the glass.

I reach for another throw blanket, and rather than ask her to get up and come back to bed, I sit behind her, wrap the blanket around us both, and pull her against my chest while I breathe her in.

“Are you okay?” I whisper in her ear.

“Storm’s coming in,” she whispers back. Her eyes are wide as she avidly watches the wind push through the trees. Lightning strikes out at sea, lighting everything up and making London flinch. “I don’t like storms.”

“I’ve got you,” I murmur, and kiss her shoulder.

“Did you see the water?” she asks. “When the lightning struck, did you see how choppy it was?”

“Yes.”

“I hope there aren’t any ships out there,” she says as the thunder booms and she flinches again. “Seaside storms are so crazy. Violent. Angry. Like a woman who’s royally pissed off and she doesn’t care who knows it.”

“That’s a good analogy,” I reply. “It does look like someone is having a tantrum.”

“And it’s destructive,” she adds.

“What is it about the storm that scares you?”

“Everything. The wind is wild, it could easily pull something out to sea. The rain isn’t a sprinkling, but more like God is dumping a huge bucket of water all at once. And the lightning and thunder just tips it all into crazy town. It’s loud and bright and messy.”

“Sounds like life, if you’re living it right,” I reply, and kiss her cheek when she glances back at me. “And sometimes that can be scary too.”

“This is a deep conversation during a crazy storm.”

Lightning flashes overhead, and almost immediately thunder claps, and she turns to bury her face in my chest.

She’s the strongest woman I’ve met in a very long time, and this storm has her reduced to shivering like a child.

“Hey,” I murmur, and tip her chin up to look at me. “You can’t control the storm, London. It’s going to happen whether you’re scared, or not. But you can calm yourself in it. That’s the trick.”

“I’ve never been good at that,” she confesses. “I can’t sleep through it, and I feel like I have to watch every second of it, in case something horrible happens and I have to run.”

I brush her hair off of her cheek and hook it behind her ear.

“Nothing horrible is going to happen tonight,” I assure her. “In fact, I think some wonderful things are going to happen.”