Page 69 of If Not for My Baby
Tom offers a sheepish half grin that might as well turn my knees liquid.
“Give me two minutes to get ready?”
“Sure, but”—his eyes lick up my legs from ankle to over-exposed thigh—“I quite like the current state of you.”
Two minutes is evidently ambitious, but six minutes later I’ve thrown on a pair of blue jeans and an eyelet lace blouse with my old reliable cowboy boots.
In the hotel elevator Tom says, “So you told Indy.” It’s not a question, but he doesn’t sound angry. In fact, he sounds kind of…proud?
“She figured it out herself,” I admit, “and promised not to tell a soul.”
“Makes sense. She’s the one who’d have to battle that particular beast.”
He’s right. As the head of his socials, I can’t imagine that would be a picnic for her. The day famously private Tom Halloran is caught hooking up with a random blond backup singer is surely the day the internet implodes.
Tom has a bright yellow taxi waiting for us downstairs and I can just make out the sun cresting over the rising skyline, casting all the brick and glass and scaffolding in a honey-peach hue.
“Where are we going that we had to leave at sunrise?”
Tom takes my palm in his and squeezes, warm and tender. “It’s a surprise.”
The drive is short, and I spend the entire ride wishing I’d sat in the middle seat and there wasn’t a foot of space between the two of us. Honestly, I wish I’d sat right on top of him and memorized every angle of his heartbreaking face, inch by inch.
At one red light, Tom absently runs his thumb over the back of my hand in its entirety. I’m reminded for the hundredth time just how much man he is—how much large, lean muscle and lanky bone is in that towering frame—and how gently he wields himself with me. My whole palm fits into his like a nesting doll. He strokes the skin between my fingers and I forget to breathe.
I roll my window down to get some much-needed air, and stare out at the honking, hustling city. It’s light enough now that I can soak it all in: more cars than I’ve ever seen, a more significant amount of trash thanRentled me to believe, andbuildings so tall I can’t see around a single corner. The air is ripe with exhaust and roasted peanuts.
“Disappointed?” he asks.
I don’t want to appear ungrateful or uncultured. “It’s awesome.”
Tom suppresses a laugh. “Took me ages to fall in love with Manhattan. It’s got a wretched frenetic feel to it that kind of rattles the mind. But there’s too much of a heartbeat—too much history here—to write it all off due to brick and asphalt.”
“There’s very little green,” I admit. Cherry Grove is nothing to write home about, surely, but it does come alive in the spring. The lawns and hiking trails are lush and overgrown with wildflowers. Bluebonnets and dainty evening primrose. The swimming holes are shaded beneath full oaks and you’re never too far from a handful of ripe blackberries.
“We’re here,” he says, and after he pays for the taxi, we shuffle out onto the street.
Hereturns out to be a walled-off park across from the noisy street I realize is Fifth Avenue. Central Park—I should have known.
Tom buys us two coffees from a street vendor—a purchase he refuses to let me even split—and we stroll toward the shady enclosure. There’s so much greenery obscuring the grounds that I don’t even register the scope of it until we’re inside. My hand once again enveloped in his, we lope through a verdant kaleidoscope of pines and leaves and branches on a winding pathway. Cedar trees lean into old, ivy-covered stone. Unruly bushes grow far past their enclosure, too eager tocrawl into the generous sunshine reigning overhead. The coffee is rich and creamy, its cardboard sleeve warm against my palm.
“Still not green enough for you?”
My eyes eat up every slab of rock and twist of vine. “It’s like home,” I say. “You can’t even hear the honking.”
Each bend we round I expect to see sweaty summer crowds, but the park is too spread out. And it’s early on a weekday morning. It’s like we have the place to ourselves. I glance down at his fingers, so comfortably threaded through mine. “Paparazzi don’t wake up this early?”
His expression screws into concern—perhaps that I’m hurt that our first date has to be in the witching hours when we won’t be seen. My lips twitch and all the muscles in his face relax.
“Surely they’re after bigger fish. I’m more concerned about running into people who know my music. But it’s an American thing, I think. I don’t avoid the public eye as much back home in Ireland. “
I love the way he saysmuchandbutlike they rhyme withsootand Ireland likeUheyereland.I love the way he always sayspeople who know my musicorlistenersand neverfans.I love his near-delusional level of humbleness.
“You think a fan will snap some pic of us and it’ll end up on TMZ.”
“They’re very dedicated.” His eyes find his shoes. “Very interested in knowin’ me.”
We stroll past a row of wooden benches baking under the morning sun even as the iron streetlamps have yet to turn off for the day. A focused jogger zooms by to my side.
