Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters #2)(43)

Dani was much better at it than Fluff.

“Wow,” he said. “You look . . .”

“Aggressively sexy and mildly terrifying?”

He paused. “Yeah, actually.”

“Thank you.” Her smile was privately pleased. Apparently, that was exactly what she’d been going for. He didn’t know why, since they were going to be on the radio, but—

The click of her high heels cut through his thoughts as she stepped closer. “You like my Wall of Doom?”

“Your . . . ? Oh, the sticky notes?” He turned back to the sea of pink and felt another smile tug at his lips. He had no idea why the sight of her chaotic, almost-impossible-to-read handwriting and her brilliant, almost-impossible-to-follow thought processes fizzed through his mind like sherbet on his tongue, but they did. “Yeah, I like it. What’s with the doom?”

“This is my preparation for the Daughters of Decadence symposium in a few weeks. I agreed to sit on a panel discussion about intersectionality in feminist literature, and, since my lifelong idol will be there, too, it’s possible I’m overpreparing.” Her shoes kept clicking, and Zaf looked down to study them. Silver high heels covered in little diamonds, her black-painted toes peeking out, tiny skulls lining the ankle straps. His smile widened.

Then her words sank past the adoring fog blanketing his brain. “A few weeks?”

“Mm-hmm. Eighteen days, to be precise.” Dani was standing beside him now, tall enough to kiss, thanks to the heels. He would take advantage, only kissing was a slippery slope that might lead to his dick inside her when they should both be inside a taxi, and also—

“You never mentioned a . . . a symposium. Or the fact that you’ve been doing all this work to get ready.”

“Of course I didn’t. I bore you with my work often enough by accident. I certainly won’t subject you to a mind-numbing speech about my quest to cover every topic that might come up on a panel you don’t care about.”

He stared. “Dani . . . you don’t bore me when you talk about work.”

She gave him a look that reminded him of a GIF his niece liked to use. The one that dripped pure skepticism, with the caption Sure, Jan.

“You don’t,” he insisted. “I mean, I wouldn’t read the books you read, and I don’t always understand the words you use, but I like your voice, and it’s cool when you get excited about nerd stuff.”

She blinked a few times, as if she’d just walked into a cloud of dust, then looked away. “Oh. Uh. Hmm. I . . . see. Right. Hmm.”

If Zaf didn’t know any better, he might think she was blushing. But Dani should already know how adorable she was. She should’ve been told a thousand times by a thousand different people, and the suspicion that she hadn’t been was making Zaf feel personally offended.

“Anyway,” he went on, brushing that spark of annoyance away. “If I’d known you were this busy”—he nodded at the chaos of the wall—“I wouldn’t have asked you to come with me tonight.” Because he knew her well enough to realize she’d rather be holed up in here like Gollum, stroking books and murmuring, “My precious.”

But she looked at him as if he’d said something ridiculous and replied, “You didn’t ask. I insisted, because you’re my friend. You do know that, don’t you, Zaf? That we’re friends?”

Well—when she put it like that, yeah, he supposed he did. He’d always known. But lately he was starting to realize what friendship with Dani really meant, just how strong and deep and powerful it ran, how much she’d do to support the people around her. And he couldn’t help but wonder how a woman who was so secretly, subtly lovely had gotten to a point where discussing romantic relationships put shadows in her eyes.

“Thank you,” he said softly.

“I’ve told you about thanking me,” she grumbled, but now he saw the discomfort and the sarcasm for what they really were. She was the sweetest person on earth, only she wasn’t used to getting any of that sweetness back.

Which was a fucking crime.

“Are you nervous?” he asked. “About the panel, I mean?”

Her smile was more like a wince. “I’m never nervous.”

“Sure. Who’s your lifelong idol?”

Dani shifted on her heels like a little kid, her lashes fluttering as she looked down, her mouth curving into a just-can’t-stop-it grin. “Inez Holly. She’s one of fewer than thirty black woman professors in the UK, and her essay on the politics of desire changed my life, so I sort of need to impress her or I might die.”

Something blossomed in Zaf’s chest, as fresh and delicate as a flower, and it smelled like honey and candlewax. It smelled like Danika. “That is the cutest thing you’ve ever said.”

When Dani was surprised, she looked especially catlike. She gave him that look now, lips pursed and brows arched, as if she was annoyed by her own astonishment. “Oh, piss off,” she muttered, but he could tell she was blushing again. Precious, she was so fucking precious. The look in her eyes, a tentative, self-conscious pleasure, made him want to grab her and kiss her and never let go.

But if he tried it, they’d be late, so Zaf satisfied himself with sliding an arm around her shoulders and squeezing. “Is this panel thing open to the public?”