BOOKER

“Not now, Sarge,” I mutter without bothering to look up. “I want to be alone.”

“Too bad,” says the voice I was just thinking I’d be hearing in my dreams for the rest of my days, and my head snaps up.

Ah, Jesus, Lena’s standing just this side of the closed door. And she’s so damn beautiful. But I stiffen my spine because I don’t think I can dispatch her twice in one night. “What are you doing back here?”

“I have a question you need to answer, then I’ll get out of your hair.”

Yeah, fat lot of good that offer is, when she’s so deep under my skin I’ll never get her out. I don’t have a lick of energy to push myself up in my chair, so I prop my chin on my hands and soak in everything about her while I can. “Shoot.”

“You’re not even going to make me a darn counter offer,” she demands indignantly, “just tell me to pack my bags and go?”

That jerks me upright, infused with new energy. And hope. “What did you have in mind?” I ask coolly. Name it. I’ll give you anything.

“A raise to match Call-me-Chester Moss’s offer. And I want a bigger dressing room than that closet you have me in.”

“Done. What else?”

“Top billing. No matter what new acts you get.”

“It’s yours. And...?”

“Another two gowns for my act.” She actually looks guilty about that one, making me want to throw back my head and laugh out loud.

“I’ll give you three. Is that it?”

Lena hesitates, then lifts her chin. “No. I want your heart.”

Her words are an arrow lodging in said heart, and I can barely breathe through the relief of realizing she apparently feels as deeply for me as I do for her. “Don’t you know that’s already yours, Lena?”

“It is?”

“Hell, yes. It’s always been yours.”

Her faces simply lights up. She crosses the office in a couple ground eating strides, leans forward...and punches me on the arm.

“Hey!” I rub the slight sting. “What the hell was that for?”

“For being such a poop. Why didn’t you tell me that in the first place, instead of showing me the door?”

“Because I’m an idiot.”

She studies her nails in silence for a moment, then looks up. Widens those baby blues at me. “Oh, is this the part where you’re waiting for me to protest you truly aren’t?”

“Yeaaah, I’m thinking maybe I’d better not hold my breath waiting for that to happen.”

“You booted me out of the best job I’ve ever had, out of your life, without blinking. I wanna know why.”

“I saw Moss stop you. Watched while you sat at his table.” I scrub my knuckles atop my left pectoral muscle as the heart beneath hurts all over again in remembered pain. “I recognized him and knew he had the means to give you everything you ever dreamed of.”

“Professionally speaking, he does.” Lena licks her lips. “And it was the berries learning my voice could take me to heights I never truly imagined.” She watches her slender finger outline the corner of my desk. Then she looks up at me. “My dreams have changed, though, Booker. I have loved you since I was seventeen years old. I’ve been mad at you longer than I’ve loved you, but even then? My feelings for you never truly went away. This love is...different than it was when I was a teenager. But that only makes it deeper, richer.”

For one horrified minute, I fear I might actually break down and cry like a girl. I clear my throat of the ball of emotion lodged there. “God, I love you so much, Lena. I thought I was losing you, and I was sick to my soul.” I perk up. “You want me to go with you when you tell Moss you aren’t taking the gig?”

“Oh, I told him already when he made me the offer.”

“What? And you didn’t lead with that?”

She gives me that don’t be an idiot look. “Of course, not. I was looking forward to hearing your negotiations before I let you know you already had me.” She scowls at me. “I didn’t expect to be kicked to the curb.”

I tug her around the desk and pull her down onto my lap. Trace my finger over the little divot between her brows. “I’m sorry, doll. I might have panicked a little—” or, okay, flat-out “—and I didn’t deal with it well. On the bright side, though, I didn’t punch him.”

Her lips curl up despite the way she’s pressing them together to keep me from seeing her amusement. Then in true Lena fashion, she gives up the fight and laughs out loud. “That is an improvement.” She gives me a prim little lopsided smile. “And they say men aren’t trainable.”

“Hell, yeah, we are, and I can prove it. Stick with me, kid. And in forty, fifty years or so, who knows? I’m liable to be downright housebroke.”

Lena kisses me, then pulls back and presses her forehead to mine. My heart damn near explodes when her breath feathers across my lips as she sighs happily. And murmurs, “You have got yourself a deal, Mister.”