Page 95 of It Happened on a Sunday
I shouldn’t, but once Sloane asked, no one could stop me. I nod and pull her against me.
“I’ll stay until you fall asleep,” I whisper as I bury my face into her vanilla-scented hair.
“Okay.”
She rolls over so that her arm is draped over my waist and her head is on my shoulder. She feels like she belongs there. Like she’s always been there.
Again, the words tremble on my lips.
Again, I bite them back.
And that’s when Sloane starts to sing, the slowest, saddest, most beautiful version of Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds” that I’ve ever heard.
Everyone knows she has an amazing voice in studio and onstage, when everything is perfectly balanced and adjusted, but the polished voice everyone hears on the radio is nothing compared to how she sounds when she’s singing a cappella. Her voice is husky. Raw. Like someone carved grief into sound. It takes my breath away as she sings a song about reassurance…and survival. I’ve heard the song a hundred times, but until I heard her version, I had no idea just how many nuances it has.
After she finishes the last note, she presses soft kisses to my chest and whispers, “Everything’s okay.”
“Go to sleep, Sloane,” I whisper. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”
“You promise?” she asks, and I can’t help smiling at the way her eyelids droop adorably.
“Try to stop me,” I tease.
“I don’t want to,” she murmurs, drifting off. “That’s the problem.”
It’s embarrassing how fast her words turn me warm and gooey like a chocolate chip cookie. But all I say is, “Good,” before she slides slowly, peacefully, into sleep. It takes every ounce of willpower I have not to follow her.
But outside, the sun is just beginning to break through the dark. I know that means I need to get going. Vivian should be landing soon, and the last thing I need is for her to raise holy hell when I’m nowhere to be found. So I get dressed, give her a kiss on the cheek, and slip silently out the door, already missing thesound of my girl’s voice.
Chapter 42
Sly
“What the hell are you doing?” Vivian demands in her thick New York accent as soon as I walk up to her table in the hotel restaurant. “Trying to make me drop dead like Joe did?”
“It’s nice to see you, too, Vivian.” I try sending my agent the slow smile Sloane can’t resist. “You’re looking lovely, as usual.”
“Fuck you,” she answers, her heavily made-up eyes narrowing as she looks me over from head to toe. “My daughter has a cross-country meet today. But am I there? No, I’m here. After taking a red-eye. Because my number one client can’t keep his dick in his pants. I know exactly how I look. Which, I have to say, is still better than you.”
“Wow. Thanks for the ego boost.” I keep my smile fixed firmly in place, largely because I know it will drive her up a wall. In the three years she’s been my agent—ever since she asked me to give her a chance when her husband, my former agent, died of a heart attack at forty-one—I’ve learned she not only appreciates curmudgeonly behavior but demands it.
“You don’t pay me to stroke your ego. You pay me to tell it like it is. And I’m here to tell you it looks like the Black Widow has taken a nice little bite out of your ass.” She pats my back as I come around the table to hug her, then gestures to the chair across from her. “Now sit down, will you? I can’t drink my coffee with you towering over me.”
“Has anyone ever told you you’re getting grumpier by the minute?” I reach forward and fish a piece of pineapple out of the bowl of cut fruit in the center of the table.
The second I bring it to my lips, it makes me think of Sloane,though I don’t know why. Probably because everything makes me think of her this morning.
“I’m grumpy because we’re getting all these brand offers and you’re going to fuck them all up if you go around missing team meetings and looking like shit.” She waves the waiter over without pausing for so much as a breath. “When’s the last time you slept?”
“I sleep,” I tell her, hoping to avoid another round of condemnation.
But Vivian levels me with what her oldest daughter calls the death stare. She isn’t my abuela, but I can’t help squirming a little anyway. “I didn’t askifyou sleep. I askedwhenwas the last time you actually laid down in a bed for non-extracurricular activities.”
“This morning,” I tell her, because I laid on my bed when I got back to the hotel this morning. That’s not quite what she was going for, but it is technically the truth.
“Yeah, right.” She snorts. “I’m widowed, not dead.”
I start to reply, but she holds up a hand as she turns to the waiter hovering nearby. “I already gave the woman who brought the fruit my order. He’ll have a cup of coffee, black, a vegetarian omelet, four strips of turkey bacon on the side, and three slices of whole wheat toast, no jam.”
