My parents are disappointed when I tell them I’ll be moving for good. There’s a mountain of documents and data, all of our most sensitive files, that has to be passed along to somebody. And there’s no one they can trust quite like family.
“Can you at least stay until the South Shore project is done?” my father asks.
“That could take years,” I say, gently. “And there’s always another project. Another job, another crisis. Our lives have never been calm. I don’t think they ever will be. Not here, anyway.”
“Is that why you’re leaving?” he asks me.
“No,” I shake my head. “I’m leaving for Raylan. But I’ll admit, the lack of imminent danger might be a nice side benefit . . . ”
Nessa flings her arms around me and hugs me much longer than I’d normally tolerate.
“I’m going to miss you,” she sobs.
“I’m just going to Tennessee, not Indonesia,” I laugh. “You can visit me, you know. And I’m sure I’ll come back here all the time.”
“No, you won’t,” Nessa says, shaking her head with surprising seriousness. “When you really fall in love . . . that person becomes your world. You’ll come back sometimes. But mostly you’ll want to be with Raylan. And I’m happy for you. Because I have the same thing with Miko. I will miss you, though!”
Dante is infuriatingly smug about the whole thing. He’s leaving on his honeymoon to Portugal with Simone and Henry, but he comes all the way over to my parents’ house so he can gloat.
“I’m the one who introduced you two,” he says, grinning.
“I know,” I say.
“I had to do it twice. Because you hated Raylan the first time.”
“I know,” I scowl at him.
“You better name your firstborn after me, for all the work I put in.”
“I’m not having a firstborn, or any born. I still don’t want kids, that hasn’t changed.”
“We’ll see,” he says, with a maddening air of superiority.
“Even if I did, I wouldn’t saddle them with the name Dante.”
His jaw drops. “Dante has been popular for eight hundred years. It has history and gravitas.”
“It’s not even a real name! It’s a nickname! You know Dante Alighieri’s real name was Durante.”
Dante looks both shocked and horrified. I don’t think he knew that at all.
“You’re lying,” he says.
“I never lie.”
He’s crestfallen. “Really? That’s really true?”
I start to feel guilty. “Never mind,” I say. “It’s not so bad. If I was going to have a kid—which I’m not—I guess I could name them Dante.”
Dante grins. “I’m holding you to that.”
Raylan and I fly back into Knoxville. Our flight is canceled, postponed, then leaves an hour earlier than expected, so we take a cab into town to kill a little time before Bo picks us up.
Raylan says we should walk by my newly purchased office building so he can see it in person. It’s not nearly as grand as the massive high-rise in which I dreamed of becoming partner, but I feel a deep flush of pleasure all the same. This building belongs to me, and me alone. This law firm will be mine. I’ll build it from the ground up.
And it has a view of the river, like I always loved in Chicago. A different, more gentle river, in a warmer town, where even at the end of November I only need a light sweater.
Even if it was cold, I’ve got a big, strong man beside me, radiating heat from his chest into my back, with his arms wrapped tight around me.
“I’m gonna come visit you here every day,” Raylan says. “I’ll bring you lunch.”
“I’m not going to get any work done if you’re around. You’re incredibly distracting,” I tell him.
“Me?” he says, innocently.
“Yes. When you were supposed to be bodyguarding me, I can’t tell you how many times I had to sneak a look at you, all scruffy and handsome in that corner chair.”
He grins. “Oh, I know you did. I caught you every time.”
“The hell you did!”
“The hell I didn’t!”
He kisses me hard.
“I’m proud of you,” he says. “I already know you’re gonna be a huge success. The best lawyer in Knoxville, guaranteed. Probably all of Tennessee.”
“Not the whole country?” I tease him.
“Well . . . there’s that one guy that got OJ off . . . ”
“Johnny Cochrane? He’s not even alive anymore!”
“Alright,” Raylan grins. “You’re the best in the whole damn country, then.”
With Raylan’s arm around my waist, we walk over to World’s Fair Park. We take a little stroll around the lake, stopping at the Sunsphere. Its gold-plated glass glitters, even though it’s not a very sunny day.
On the opposite side of the tower, I see a girl with long black hair standing next to a slim young man in a battered leather jacket. They’re standing with their backs to me, but something about the couple looks oddly familiar. They look tense, as if they’ve been arguing. The girl starts to walk away, and the boy grabs her and pulls her back again. He seizes her face and kisses her ferociously. For a moment she tries to pull away, but then she kisses him back, just as hard.
It’s only when they break apart that I realize it’s Bo and Duke.
“Oh!” I gasp. “Let’s go, I don’t want them to see us.”
“Why not?” Raylan says.
“I don’t want your sister to feel embarrassed.”
He grins. “She should feel stupid. It’s about damn time.”
“Come on!” I say, pulling him away. I make him walk all the way back to the crepe shop with me.
“Those silly kids,” he says, shaking his head. “Why don’t they know they should fall in love, when it’s so damn obvious?”
I look up at him, at his wolfish smile and his bright blue eyes.
“It’s just obvious, huh?” I say.
“Yup,” he says. “Sometimes it’s clearly meant to be. I knew it from the moment I saw you.”
“All you knew was that you were driving me crazy.”
“Yup,” he grins. “And I wanted to do it a whole lot more.”
