Don't Speak (A Modern Fairytale, #5)(55)

“But,” she said softly as he pulled into the garage and cut the engine, “I will come here and spend the day with you and your family. I’ll say I’m working. I can meet your folks and sister at Thanksgiving. Maybe again at Christmas. They can get to know me a little—”

“Laire!” He turned to her, his eyes wide. “You’d do that?”

She gulped, nodding her head. “I would.”

A small smile tilted up his lips, growing bigger and surer as he stared at her. “You’ll come for Thanksgivin’. You promise?”

She smiled back at him, tears biting at her eyes as she understood how much it meant to him. “I promise.”

Leaning across the bolster in the dark garage, he reached for her face, pulling it to his and kissing her. It lasted only for a second before he rested his forehead on hers. “I’m relieved. I just needed some sort of definite plan in place. Somethin’ to look forward to.”

“So did I,” she admitted.

“Come inside?” he asked, nuzzling her nose. “I know you don’t drink much, but my parents always keep a bottle of Champagne cold, and I want to celebrate. One glass?”

Laire had never had Champagne before, and the idea was too tempting to refuse.

Ten minutes later, standing at Erik’s kitchen counter as the cold bubbles sluiced down her throat, she learned what all the fuss was about. It was delicious.

“You like it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

She nodded, marveling at the delicate flute in her fingers. So many times she’d served Champagne to patrons at the Pamlico House, but she’d never actually imagined herself tilting one of those flutes back into her own mouth. Sighing happily, she took another sip and giggled. “It tickles.”

He grinned at her. “Can I ask you somethin’?”

“Course. Anything,” she said, leaning over the marble counter, looking up at his handsome face.

“Do you have an e-mail account?”

She laughed in a short burst because his question came out of nowhere and surprised her. “I do. You have to have e-mail to order things. Not that I order a lot of things, but every now and then, I do.”

“Well, how about we exchange e-mail addresses, and then we can keep in touch while I’m away at school?”

It was something Laire hadn’t considered, and her heart leaped at the notion of them still being in contact. Sure, she’d only be able to check her e-mail quickly, when it was quiet at King Triton, which wasn’t often, but even if she checked in once a week, it would lessen her longing for him, wouldn’t it?

She looked up at him, a smile on her face, when something occurred to her and made her look back down at the counter with misgivings.

Wait. Would it make her miss him less? Or would it heighten her yearning to an almost unbearable level? Not only for Erik, but for the wonderful world he inhabited while she was still stuck on Corey. He’d tell her about the people he was meeting and places he was going, and what would she share with him? The number of blues her father had caught that day? That she was making a new blouse for someone he’d never heard of? That Ms. Sebastian had added grouper to the winter menu?

In a blinding moment of self-realization, she understood that what she offered him—an eighteen-year-old fisherman’s daughter from the Banks—was charming now, while he was close to her, but might not hold such allure from a distance. And she needed for him to long for her just as much as she longed for him. She needed it to guarantee his return, and weekly updates about her less-than-fascinating life wouldn’t help her cause when he was surrounded by sophisticated college girls.

Taking another sip of the Champagne, she looked up at him and shrugged. “I don’t think so. I don’t have a computer at home. Only at work, and I can’t risk Daddy or Uncle Fox catching me writing to you.”

The sudden disappointment on his face made her heart clench.

“Oh,” he said. “Then I suppose phone calls are out too?”

“It’s just not a good idea for them to see Duke come up repeatedly on the ID. They’ll get suspicious. And if I call you, it’d show up on the bill.”

“So we really won’t talk to each other until I get back for Thanksgivin’,” he said softly, his voice low and sad as the realization hit home.

“Unless you can come out for a weekend?” she asked hopefully.

He grimaced. “I got my hockey schedule. Every weekend’s accounted for.”

“Oh,” she said, finishing the last of her Champagne and realizing, in that moment, how much she’d hoped to see him for a weekend between August and November. It hurt to know that she wouldn’t.

“Yeah,” he said, refilling their glasses. “It’s crazy.”

“Sounds like it.”

“Laire?” he said, clinking her glass. “You want to stop talkin’ about this?”

She didn’t trust speaking over the lump in her throat so she took a sip of bubbly and nodded.

“Want to go lie on my bed and just . . . I don’t know. We can watch TV or take a nap or talk about nothin’?”

Her breathing hitched when he said “lie on my bed,” but she felt her whole body react in protest to his suggestions. She wanted to be in his bed, yes. She had no interest, however, in TV, napping, or talking.