I pressed my lips together and nodded. This wasn’t the time or place for this fight. I ran a twenty-million-dollar charity, for fuck’s sake, but okay.
She shut the door behind her, and Noah raised his eyebrows at me. “Do I want to know?”
“Nope.” I clicked refresh on my inbox a little harder than necessary and avoided his eyes at all costs. “Feel free to look around the room and get a feel for her,” I offered, clicking again.
“Thanks.” He moved around Gran’s office in silence for the next ten minutes while I hit the refresh button so often, my mouse sounded like morse code.
“You’re in a lot of these pictures,” he noted, leaning in toward Gran’s photo gallery.
“She raised me.” That was the simplest explanation to both the question he’d asked and the one he hadn’t.
He studied me for an awkward moment, then moved on.
“Oh, thank God,” I muttered, opening the notification that the contract had been accepted. I took the thumb drive I’d spent the last few days preparing and walked it over to him. “It’s here. Deal is done.”
“What’s this?” His brow furrowed.
“It’s the manuscript, the letters, and a few pictures.” I pressed it into his palm. “Now you have everything.”
His fingers wrapped around the drive, but his entire frame tensed. “I want the actual manuscript.”
“Good, because it’s here.” I gestured to his palm. “I scanned everything in, and before you argue, the chances of you walking out that door with my gran’s originals are zero and zero. Even she used to make a copy before sending it to her editor.”
“But I’m not the editor. I’m now the writer who is finishing the original manuscript.” His jaw ticked, and I got the feeling he wasn’t used to losing. Ever.
“Were you planning on typing it out on this thing, too?” I nodded toward Gran’s typewriter. “Just to keep it authentic?”
His eyes narrowed.
“Just checking. Originals stay. Period. Or hey, feel free to use that out.” Originals never left the house, and he wasn’t the exception just because he was pretty. Our eyes warred in a silent argument, but eventually he nodded.
“I’ll begin reading tonight and will call you with my thoughts when I’m finished. Once we agree on the direction of the plot, I’ll start writing.”
I walked him to the door, unable to kick the nervousness tightening my chest. “You said you know the worth of what I just handed to you.”
“I do.”
Our gazes collided, the electricity—chemistry, attraction, whatever it was—coursing between us enough to raise goose bumps on my arm. “Earn it.”
His dark eyes flared at the challenge. “I’ll give them the happily-ever-after they deserve.”
My hand tightened on the doorknob. “Oh, no. That’s the one thing you can’t do.”
Chapter Six
August 1940
Middle Wallop, England
Scarlett’s heart clenched as she watched Jameson whirl Constance around the small dance floor of the local pub. He took so much care with Constance because he knew how precious she was to Scarlett, which only made her like him more.
Too much, too soon, too fast…it was all of that and then some, but she couldn’t bring herself to slow it down.
“You’re falling for him, aren’t you?” one of his American friends—Howard Reed, if she remembered correctly—asked from across their table, his arm wrapped around Christine, another filter officer who bunked in the same hut as Scarlett.
Christine glanced over the top of the newspaper she was reading. The headlines were more than enough to convince Scarlett to look away.
“I…couldn’t say,” Scarlett answered, even as heat bloomed in her cheeks, giving her away. She was with Jameson every free moment they had, and between his flight hours and her schedule, there weren’t a lot of moments to be had between them.
She’d only known him for three weeks, and yet she couldn’t remember what the world had felt like before. There were now two eras in her life—before Jameson, and now.
She filed the after Jameson in the same category as after the war. Both were obscure enough concepts that she refused to waste her time examining either of them, especially now. Since the Battle of Britain, as Churchill had called it, had begun a few weeks ago, and the Germans had begun bombing various airfields around Britain, their time together had taken on the sharp, undeniable taste of desperation—an urgency to grasp on to what they could while they had it.
Work had picked up, too. Their schedule was grueling, and she found herself placing flags for Jameson’s own patrols on the map, marking his current location and holding her breath as the news came in minute by minute from the radio operators. She noticed every time a 609 flag moved, even if it wasn’t on her section of the board.
“Yeah, well, he’s sweet on you, too,” Howard remarked with a grin.
The song came to an end, but there was no band to clap for, just a record to be changed.
Jameson escorted Constance through the sea of uniforms and back to the table.
“Dance with me, Scarlett,” he said, offering his hand and a smile that stripped away her defenses.
“Of course.” She traded places with her sister, then slid into Jameson’s arms as a slower tune started up.
“I’m glad I got to see you tonight,” he said into her hair.
“I hate that it’s only for a few hours.” She rested her cheek on his chest and breathed him in. He always smelled like soap, aftershave lotion, and the tang of metal that seemed to cling to his skin even between patrols.
“I’ll take a few hours with you on a Wednesday night whenever I get the chance,” he promised softly.
His heartbeat was strong and steady as they swayed. Here was the only place she felt safe or certain about anything lately. There was nothing in this world that compared to the feel of his arms around her.
“I wish I could stay here, just like this,” she said softly, her fingers making lazy circles on the shoulder of his uniform.
“We can.” His hand splayed on her lower back without
