He leans down and touches his lips to mine. He pulls away slowly, his eyes on my mouth. “Me too.” He glances at my apartment door, then returns his eyes to me. “Can I come in?”
As much as I’ve been dying to hear him ask that question, I find myself feeling torn. I want my mind to be fully on him when we’re together, and I can’t do that when my thoughts keep straying back to Luca and his letters.
“Maybe we should take it slow.” It kills me to hear these words come out of my own mouth. “Is that okay?”
He smiles. “Of course it is.”
He kisses me one more time, then heads back down the hallway toward the stairs. I go inside my apartment alone. I pick up Penelope Hayes’s business card on the kitchen counter, look at it for a moment, and then flick it into the trash.
Something rolls across the floor above me, making my ceiling rumble. I picture Jake up there, playing with the kittens, and I smile.
ChapterTwenty-One
FAN MAIL
“You’re a genius.”
These are the first words that Patrick Facey says to me when he sees me Tuesday morning. His face is flushed and his eyes are brighter than I’ve ever seen them. It’s a little bit scary. I didn’t know the man could look this elated.
“Can you put that in writing?” I ask. “Because yesterday you were pretty close to firing me.”
“Our station has never been more popular,” he says. “We got over a thousand new followers on our Facebook page yesterday, and we’re still getting more coming in. Everyone loved your floating head.”
“Fine. I’ll take a raise, if you insist.”
“Very funny. I actually wanted to talk to you about extending the amount of time you’re on air. You wouldn’t be required to stay any later, but viewers would get to see more of you and your shining personality.”
I know that this isn’t his idea. I read through the comments on the news station’s social media page last night, where commenters were begging the station to let them see more of me.
I lean back in my chair and cross my legs, putting on a show of thinking about it. “How much more airtime are we talking?”
He shrugs. “Maybe a minute or two per segment. You could engage in some banter with the anchors. I’ve heard you and Anette talking. I know that you can be funny when you want to be, and I think our viewers want to see that too.”
“An extra minute or two would require more planning on my part. It would also give me less time to plan. Sounds like more work. What’s in it for me?”
“You would get more exposure. All of Miami would be watching you.”
“You’re right. More exposure could be a good thing. Maybe I’ll even get another job offer with higher pay, and take all your new viewers with me to another station.”
He tightens his lips, and his semi-bald head turns redder. “I’m sure we can work out a deal that will make us both happy. What are you thinking, like, a five percent bump?”
I glance up at the ceiling, pretending that this is the first I’ve thought about it. Then I look him in the eye and say, “More like twenty percent.”
“Tw-twenty percent? Really?”
“Twenty percent,” I repeat, keeping my tone even. I raise an eyebrow.
“Okay. Well. I’ll see what I can do.”
He leaves the room, and I swivel my chair to face my desk again. Seconds later, Anne marches into the room with my green dress draped over one arm and a coffee for me in her other hand.
“What’s with Patty-boy? He seemed really flustered.”
“He wants me to spend more time on air to help keep our new fans watching. I told him I’d do it for a raise. I don’t think he liked how much I asked for.”
She sets the coffee cup next to me, then places the dress next to it. “They didn’t give you much of a raise when you came on air full-time. I’m sure that with Emmanuel gone, they can afford however much you asked for.”
“That’s assuming Patty-boy didn’t already give himself and the anchors a raise when Emmanuel left.”
