Take a Hint, Dani Brown (The Brown Sisters #2)(73)

Zaf huffed out an impatient sigh and turned to face him. “I said my girlfriend has been worried about this panel for fucking centuries, and now it’s happening, and if anyone talks over her or gets in the way of me hearing how incredibly smart she is, I will put that someone through a wall. So it’s really in both our interests for you to shut up.” He paused. “Cheers, though. Appreciate it.”

“Right,” the man said faintly.

Zaf turned back to the panel—and realized with a little start that, when he’d called Danika his girlfriend, it hadn’t been for show. He’d meant it. Because she felt like his.

He needed to keep an eye on that. The problem was, he didn’t want to.

Up on the platform, the speakers were invited to introduce themselves, and then the real discussion began. A moderator asked questions and made sure everyone had a turn to comment on concepts that went straight over Zaf’s head. The talk still managed to be compelling, though—or maybe that was just Dani’s voice, a shining golden thread gleaming out at him, husky and electric with enthusiasm. It took her a little while to really get going—not that anyone who didn’t know her would notice. But after a few questions, she forgot to worry and lost herself in the topic, holding her own just like he knew she would.

At one point, she said something about examples of historic erasure being available “in real time, right before our eyes, if we need a blueprint to justify our interpretation of past texts,” and Inez Holly nodded her head approvingly and murmured, “Mmm. Mm.”

For a moment, he was worried Dani might actually dissolve from sheer pleasure and float away. Or that she might jump up out of her seat and scream, Did you see that? Did you see that, everyone? Inez Holly just nodded at me. But she limited her reaction to a beaming smile. Her gaze wandered across the crowd and found his, as if she’d been searching for him, as if she wanted him to be a part of this moment.

And Zaf knew. He knew, once and for all, that he loved her. So hard and so hopelessly that he couldn’t deny it, couldn’t fight it, couldn’t hide from it for another fucking second. He loved her intelligence and her ambition, her crystals and her sticky notes, her charming smiles and her dreamy ones. He loved the way she thought in straight lines and facts but believed in magic to honor someone she’d lost. He loved her chameleon curls and her passionate speeches and her awkward unfamiliarity with her own emotions. He just—he loved her.

Zaf remembered the man he’d been three weeks ago, the man who’d decided never to fall in love with Danika Brown, and realized he’d discovered the meaning of hubris.

Oh fucking well.

Worth it.



It took Dani a good thirty minutes on the panel to realize that, even though she could feel her voice shaking with nerves, no one appeared able to hear it. She didn’t know how that was possible; she just knew that the audience watched her speak as if nothing strange was afoot, and her fellow panelists responded to her points with thoughtful respect, and Inez fucking Holly appeared to agree with her more than once, which must mean . . . it must mean . . .

It must mean everything was fine, and Dani was doing well. It must mean that when Eve and Sorcha and Zaf had sworn she could do this, they hadn’t been lying or soothing or biased. They had been right. Which she’d already known, logically, but now, as her heart slowed and her clammy palms dried and her confidence grew, she felt it. And it felt good.

When the panel finally ended and Dani headed over to Zaf, she was so exhilarated that she practically ran. He caught her, thank goodness. Wrapped his arms around her and pressed her safe against his chest, kissed the top of her head and lifted her clean off her feet for a moment. It was enormously undignified and completely unnecessary. It wasn’t as if anyone here cared about #DrRugbae’s public displays of affection, or even wanted those displays.

But Zaf loved touching her. And Dani—Dani was quite fond of Zaf.

She was still grinning like a loon a couple of hours later, when she abandoned him by the table of watered-down juice in the postsymposium reception room to nip to the loo. But when she entered the bathroom, it wasn’t empty. Inez Holly stood in front of the sinks, slicking on a nude lipstick and throwing Dani into a spiral of excited, starstruck panic simply by existing. Any urge Dani had to pee vanished like smoke. Inez Holly could not be subjected to the sound of her bodily functions. In fact, Dani was in the midst of a passionate mental debate about the pros and cons of backing slowly out of the room when Inez Holly’s eyes met hers in the mirror.

“Danika,” Inez Holly said, “isn’t it?”

It took Dani a disgracefully long time to splutter, “Er, yes. Me. My name, rather. That is indeed my name. Correct. Thank you.” Oh dear goddess, did I just say ‘thank you’?

Inez Holly gave a quirk of the lips that might, on a less stately lady, have been referred to as a smirk. “Did you need the toilet?”

“Pardon? Oh, no.” Then, realizing that sounded quite odd, Dani added, “I just wanted to come in and . . . check my hair.” Wonderful. Now, rather than odd, she sounded both vain and ridiculous, since hair less than two inches long was not exactly in need of regular checking.

But Inez Holly refrained from passing judgment, for she was great and merciful. “Well, by all means, claim a mirror.”

Would it be awkward to take the mirror next to Inez Holly? Would it be insulting not to take the mirror next to Inez Holly? Dani considered this for a few feverish seconds before realizing it was a moot point, since there were only three mirrors and Inez Holly was in the middle.