“How’s the inn?”
“Perfect, except that I’m talking to you when I should be talking to Sarah.”
“Bye-bye.”
“Bye.” Stone hung up and returned to the bar.
“That was Dino, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“It was.”
“Dino knows before I do where I’m spending the weekend?”
“I wasn’t surprising Dino.”
“Good point.”
“You hungry?”
“You bet.”
“Miss, could I have a menu and a wine list, please?”
They polished off a dinner of smoked salmon and roast pheasant and a bottle of very good cabernet, then, sated, went back upstairs.
Later, after they had made love again, Stone said, “I like having you around. I’d like to have you around all the time.”
“I hope to God that’s not a proposal,” she said, lifting her head from his shoulder.
“Not yet.”
“Not for a long while,” she said.
“As you wish, but I would like to point out that you are, technically, at least, homeless.”
“And whose fault is that?”
“Mine, entirely mine. And I want to make up for it by offering you a bed…home, rather.”
“And a very nice home it is,” Sarah said. “Your house was a shambles when I left for Italy.”
“Do you think you could feel at home in it?”
“I think I could feel at home with you.”
“Then there’s nothing more to say.”
“Yes, there is.”
“What?”
“I told you before, I’m a country girl; I need a place outside the city.”
“Where would you like to have a place?”
“Not the Hamptons; I’ve had too much of that crowd.”
“Where, then?”