Page 98 of The Grosvenor's Ghost
We might be twenty-one now but I’ll always be sixteen around her.
“Connie got us the Windsor Suite,” I tell her even though she knows that.
“He knows I won’t stay anywhere else.”
As she stares at me, I see her shoulders drop a bit and her hands go slightly limp at her sides. Almost like she’s relieved to be here with me.
“Should we?” I nod to the stairs behind me, playing with the keycard.
She nods, smiles. “I’m going to kill him if he’s put flower petals over the bed.”
“Not your thing?”
She scoffs. “God no! So provocative.”
“Might wanna wait outside for a minute, then.”
Laughs, hits my chest. “You’d never. You know me too well.”
“Yep,” I breathe. “I do.”
I push the door open for her, she sighs, runs straight over to the window. Typical of her. If the view isn’t to her liking, best believe she’s making it someone’s problem.
“You know,” she spins around to face me. “I spent an entire month in this very room when you left. The concierge knows me on a first name basis now.”
I blow out a breath. “For that price, why didn’t you just buy an apartment?”
She waves her hand around. “What apartment is going to compete with this?”
I go over to the blue sofa at the bottom of the bed, sit down, take a deep breath. “So?”
She walks around the room, tucks her hair behind her ear. “All cards on the table?”
“I guess so.”
“There’s a lot to unpack.” She sits on the chaise by the window, crosses her tanned legs and looks at me. “Where do we start?”
“What about with what you told your boyfriend to run away to Paris with me?” I’m half joking but also actually concerned.
She swallows. “Told him I was staying with a friend.”
“In the country or…?”
“I’m not sure that’s really important.”
“I’m sure it will be when he finds out.”
“He isn’t going to.”
“So, I’m just a friend, then?”
“You can’t be anything else.”
“If Digby wasn’t in the picture?”
She shakes her head, looks away from me. “I don’t know.”
There’s a thick silence, the kind that’s so unbelievably heavy with unspoken words. When you have so much to say, it’s hard to start. There’s so much that I want to ask her but I just don’t know if I’m ready for the answers yet.
