The Unknown Beloved(124)

“Yeah,” Malone grunted. “Maybe I do.”

“Maybe you do. And you know I’ll be calling that marker in.”



He was lurking at her bedroom door again, like he’d done over the last few days. Dr. Peterka said she needed rest and liquids—he’d checked on her several times since they’d brought her home—and she’d gotten plenty of both. The Rauses checked on her as well. The story was that Dani had been accidentally trapped in the faulty freezer. Privately, Malone knew Peterka and Raus were questioned at length, but Ness was handling that. Sweeney’s name never came up when Raus or Peterka made their calls on Dani. He knew because he hadn’t been far from her side since the night he’d found her at the morgue.

Her aunts had hovered too, and Dani had patiently borne their anxious fluttering and Malone’s constant presence. She’d told him and Eliot everything that had occurred—word for word, minute by minute—when Francis Sweeney strolled into the morgue on Mead.

Yet there was so much that hadn’t been said. He’d been waiting for the horror to ebb, for the quiet and privacy his feelings required.

“Michael?” Dani called.

He stuck his head around the frame. “Can I come in?”

“Yes.”

He shut the door behind him and moved to stand beside her bed. She was sitting up, her back against the headboard, and she looked beautiful. Well and rested. Her face was scrubbed, her hair loose, her nightgown fresh. A pitcher and a glass of water sat beside her on her nightstand.

“How do you feel?” he asked. She’d been asked the same thing countless times in the last few days. She had to be weary of answering, but she answered all the same, reassuring him.

“I’m bored silly.”

He gave her the barest of grins, but his heart contracted. “Have you ever been bored a day in your life?”

“No. I haven’t had time.”

“That’s what I thought.”

“I’m not spending another day lying in bed, Michael. Tomorrow, life must go on.”

“All right,” he whispered, nodding. He chewed his lip, eyeing her glass of water, and then he took it and gulped it down. Lenka had refilled it before she went to bed as well as the pitcher beside it. He poured Dani another glass and set it down before shoving his hands in his pockets.

“Michael? Did you want to talk?”

He cleared his throat. They’d talked at length about the Butcher and her ordeal. They’d talked about the burnt remains that Eliot believed were Frank Sweeney. But they hadn’t talked about what came next. “I just need . . . I just need to hold on to you for a while. I’ll be gone when you wake, I promise.” He was trying for easy, for lighthearted, but when he met Dani’s gaze, she shook her head.

“No,” she said.

“No?”

“No. If I let you hold on to me again, Michael Malone, you need to be here when I wake. And every morning after that.”

He nodded, his eyes holding hers. “All right, Dani.”

“All right?” she asked. They studied each other, taking each other in, conversing silently.

“All right,” he repeated.

“And I think maybe we should move downstairs,” she said. “To your room.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes. There’s a little more privacy and a much better tub. But we might have to make things more official if . . . that’s . . . going to happen.”

“Sign another six-month rental agreement?” he teased, but his heart was in his throat, and the ring in his pocket was burning a hole in his leg.

“I was thinking sixty years,” she said. Firmly.

“Sixty years in Cleveland? I’ll be one hundred years old.”

“Lenka and Zuzana will be almost two hundred years old. Not to mention Charlie. Do you think we might let Darby have a room in the stable? It wouldn’t take much to make it a nice little cottage.”

“So now you’re going to take on two jobless men as part of your load?”

“Yes. Absolutely.”

He sat down on the bed beside her and reached for her hand. “I don’t think Darby is going to stick around, sweetheart.”

“No?” She sounded so disappointed.

His eyes were drawn to the picture of George Flanagan and Darby O’Shea, side by side, trying to be serious and failing. The St. Christopher medallion on the rusting chain was no longer slung over the corner of the frame.

“And what about you, Michael? Are you going to stick around?” Her voice was quiet. Mild. But when he looked back at her, her mismatched eyes were turbulent. Blue sky and dark earth, the whole wide world in one small face. For a moment he just allowed himself to look, to study the landscape he wanted to call home. Then he brought their clasped hands to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the space between her knuckles and her wrist.

“Yes, Dani. I am.”

He took the ring from his pocket and without waiting for permission or dropping to his knees, he slid it on her finger.

Her breath hitched, but he kept his gaze fixed on the ring, suddenly so nervous he couldn’t look at her.

It was too big. He’d been afraid of that, but they could get it sized or trade it for something she liked better. He’d walked into the jeweler on the corner of East Fifty-Fifth and Broadway that afternoon and walked out again fifteen minutes later, his wallet much lighter. It was a nice ring—a gold filigree setting with a garnet center—but he had no eye for such things. It was the girl he was sure of. The ring was just a formality.