“But you’ll come,” he pushed urgently, pulling back to look down at her, his gaze intense.
“It will take me a month or two at least,” she reasoned.
“Two weeks. I’ll never make it a month,” he insisted.
“A month or two,” she repeated breathlessly, his urgency making her heart pound until she could hear the deafening sound ringing in her ears. “Dante, I can’t just leave, either. I have a responsibility to my patients.”
He groaned. “I know. It’s just going to be hard. Literally. All the time.”
She laughed and pushed against his chest. “Is that all you ever think about?”
“Since I met you . . . yeah. Pretty much,” he answered unhappily.
Sarah pushed harder, getting him to step back. “I’ll move as soon as I can.” Relief flooded through her body, elated that she wasn’t going to have to try to live without Dante.
He wants me with him.
They’d been avoiding any mention of the future, but now they were going to have one together. “Coco has to go,” she mentioned casually.
“Damn dog,” he muttered, but he was smiling. “I can handle that if you come with the deal.”
Sarah knew Dante adored Coco. When it came to her dog, Dante was a total fraud. He fed her human food at every opportunity and spoiled the little dog rotten. “You’d miss her if she didn’t come with me.” She started to step carefully through the dirt alley to reenter Main Street.
“Sarah?” Dante grasped her upper arm, his voice compelling.
She gave him a questioning look.
“I’d miss more than the sex,” he told her gravely. “I’d miss you.”
Her heart skipped a beat as she looked at his earnest expression. “I’d miss you, too,” she admitted, reaching out to run her palm over the stubble on his cheek. Living without Dante now would be like taking the light he’d lit inside her and putting it out, plunging her back into loneliness. Except now that aloneness would be all the more profound because she knew what it was like to not be lonely.
He took her hand from his face and kissed it before leading her back to the pavement. “Here.” He handed her the bag he’d gotten at Dolls and Things.
She tilted her head and looked at him. “What is it?”
“Something you should have had a long time ago,” he rumbled, waiting.
Sarah opened the bag and pulled out the gorgeous Victorian doll she’d always admired in the window of Mara’s shop. “Oh my God. Dante,” she breathed reverently. “I love this one.” She hugged the doll for just a second, stroking the velvety softness of the dress.
Dante’s eyes softened. “Why didn’t you buy it?”
“I’m twenty-seven years old. It didn’t—”
“Make sense?” Dante finished, grinning at her. “Woman, a lot of really good things in life don’t make sense.”
Like she hadn’t learned that? In reality, she and Dante made no sense at all, yet they fit together perfectly. “She’ll be a wonderful memento of Amesport,” Sarah said, still in awe that Dante had bought her something so simple that touched her so deeply. “Thank you.”
Dante shrugged. “It was nothing.”
He was wrong. It was definitely . . . something. It was a gift from the heart, and it touched her soul. It was ironic that the best gifts she’d ever gotten, her bike and this beautiful doll, had come from Dante. How had he ever gotten to know her deepest desires so quickly?
She tucked the doll back into the bag carefully and Dante took it from her to carry. He snatched her other hand possessively as they continued walking back to the other end of the street, where he’d left his truck.
“You’re not driving back to California?” Sarah asked curiously, wondering why he wasn’t taking his truck.
“Hell, no. I’m letting Evan send it back. I’d cut off my time here if I drove. I’d already have to be on the road.”
Friday. The day after tomorrow.
Really, they only had tomorrow if Dante had to leave early enough on Friday to check back into the station before the weekend. “What would you like to do tomorrow?” Sarah asked earnestly. “I’ll see if I can clear most of my schedule since it will be your last day here.”
“Anything I want?” Dante asked, turning his head toward her and grinning wickedly.
“Yes.” Sarah knew that evil grin, and her heart started to beat faster.
“You’ll be sorry,” he warned her.
Sarah wasn’t sorry, but she was sore the next day. Dante got his wish, and they never left the bed the entire day.
The next evening, Jared and Grady left Dante’s house after saying good-bye to Dante, both of them a little solemn.
“I guess you’ll be headed out pretty soon, too,” Grady commented thoughtfully to Jared as he started his truck.
Honestly, Jared could have walked back to his house, but he welcomed Grady’s company for a little longer. “In a while,” he said noncommittally. “Was it me, or did those two look like they’ve been heating up the sheets all day?” Jared had noticed that Dante looked worn out but smug, and Sarah had been more than a little tousled. “Maybe we should have called first.”
Grady grinned as he turned out of Dante’s driveway. “Naw. It was more fun to watch both of them scrambling and looking guilty as hell. I think we interrupted a very long good-bye.” He didn’t sound the least bit repentant. “Going there was pretty pointless other than the fun of watching the two of them squirm.”