Page 29 of Love, Morgan

“What?” I gasped, inhaling a bite of food.

She watched me incredulously. “Ignoring the fact that you’re clearly not ready to admit how interested you are in Ms. Franklin, are you telling me you just saw allthatand don’t think those two are into each other?”

I sipped my coffee carefully, desperate not to choke again. It was obvious, wasn’t it? I’d seen it myself. There was no denying the way they looked at each other, or the way they’d become painfully awkward when Thalia called them out…

I sighed. “Fine, yeah, it does seem like they’re into each other.”

She grinned, obviously proud of herself. “Great. Now, you know exactly how ridiculous you look pretending not to be interested in Ms. Franklin, so, the next time I bring it up, maybe you’ll just admit you like her and want to see her before you’re out of time.”

She wiggled her eyebrows, stood up, stole another piece of pineapple, and walked off towards the front desk and her actual job, leaving me stunned and confused over my breakfast.

Maybe I was a little more interested than I should have been in Morgan, but, in my defense, our interactions thus far had been so odd there was no other way to be. How was I not supposed to be fascinated by her?

So, maybe Thalia was right about that. But she was also right about the time. I wasn’t sure when Morgan was leaving, but I had less than a week to go here. Bo and Hai’ai could spend years dancing around each other, building up a friendship, and doing the groundwork for a relationship. When you were strangers from different lives, just happening to be in the same place for a couple of weeks, it was hardly the same thing.

I wanted to see Morgan because I couldn’t help but want to know more about this mysterious, mesmerizing woman. But I knew what was and wasn’t possible. And I was fine with that.

???

Morgan climbing over her balcony and onto mine was exactly the kind of Romeo-and-Juliet nonsense I’d have put into the impossible category, but, after returning to my bungalow and taking my laptop onto the deck to do some relaxing work, there she was.

“A mango is a weird gift to send someone,” her voice called, startling me so much I almost threw my laptop into the ocean.

I jumped up from my seat, my heart pounding and my hands shaking, as she held a whole, yellow mango aloft and examined the space between our decks.

“Of course,” she continued, taking hold of the railing on her side and seeming to test the strength of it, “if you had truly sent it, I imagine it would have been so beautifully presented that it would never have occurred to me to even question the sending of a mango as a gift. It would have just made sense.”

“Okay,” I said slowly, watching her pull herself up and over her railing. I was frozen to the spot and entirely unsure of what to do, or what was going on.

“Furthermore, anybody who knows what you do for a living, wouldn’t have doubted for a second whether or not your number one fan would know what your handwriting looks like.”

As she clung to the outside of her railing, she moved the mango to her mouth, holding it there, and nothing was making any sense at all.

“All of this, of course,” she continued, her voice muffled by the mango as she attempted to maneuver herself over onto my railing, “leads me to believe the mango gift is actually from an imposter. Someone pretending to be you for reasons currently unknown, but which I am very excited to figure out.”

I stared at her, watching her impossibly long robe flutter around her as it dipped down into the water below. It was so light, it swirled around on top of the water like an oil spill—only beautiful and not destructive.

I sucked in a breath that squeaked and squealed embarrassingly. “Your robe is in the water.”

She laughed. “Just be glad I’m not in the water.”

“I’m not sure we know you won’t end up there…” I whispered, speaking without a filter.

She grinned over her shoulder at me and my entire body tensed. I didn’t understand her at all. She was angry, she yelled at me, she brought a gift, she was a fan… And, she was climbing over two balconies, rather than just coming to the door, with a mango in her mouth.

She reached out with one hand, grasping tightly to my railing, and releasing her body to leap to my side with the forward momentum.

And then she was there. Climbing over the railing on my side, and standing before me.

“Hello,” she said, smirking slightly as she adjusted the now wet robe around herself with the hand not holding a mango. “I am sure you’ve been desperate for my company, so here I am.”

She looked like a movie star. The long robe, her face flushed slightly from clambering between our two decks, and the gorgeous ocean spilling out for miles behind her. And she’d just climbed onto my deck with no word of where she’d been for the last week, no mention of our previous conversation, no asking for permission to come over, just doing it. Just existing.

Morgan Franklin possessed a confidence others merely dreamed of.

“Hello,” I finally managed to get out. “Why the mango, exactly?”

She held it up again. “You tell me.”

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