“I’m not going to Disneyland,” he replied with a small laugh. “I can think of something a hell of a lot better.”
“Yeah? What’s that?” My heart pounded as I asked the question, hope and desire mixing in a formula I could almost read.
“Skiing in the Alps?” he flirted.
“Hmm. Skiing does not sound anywhere near as fun as Disneyland.”
“Okay…not skiing. But definitely sliding my hands over something snowy.” His voice dropped a whole notch, and my body went up into curls of smoke, awareness invading every vein.
I wasn’t sure I could respond without embarrassing myself, so I changed the subject. “Jada said we should leave early if we want to be there when you arrive.”
“Don’t come to the yacht club,” he said quietly. “Too much going on there. The media will be insane.” There was a warning to his words that spoke of more than media. Now that I’d lived through the last week of his and Jada’s mixed-up world, I believed there probably was. “Once Dax and I are done with the interviews, I’m coming to New London. Someone asked me to come back to them, and I kind of liked the sound of it.”
The tingling and bubbling in my veins grew to a painful ache, carbon dioxide fighting to escape through my skin.
“I can think of some ways for us to celebrate,” I breathed out.
“Fuck, Vi…I’m not going to be able to get that vision out of my head now.”
“Good. Then, you’ll hurry.”
He chuckled. “I don’t want to hurry. I want to go slow to remember every damn moment.”
“After you get here, we can decide whose way is better.”
The desire in his voice made every flirt and every tease and every innuendo worth it. Dawson Langley wanted me.
???
When I woke up on Saturday, I was full of anticipation.
Dawson and Dax were going to land in New York in just a few hours, having broken the record for the westbound course just like they’d broken the record going east, smashing the round-trip time to smithereens. My heart was full of happiness for them. Their accomplishment would be hard to beat again.
But my true anticipation came from knowing Dawson was coming home.
He wasn’t spending the night in New York. He was coming back to New London. To me. Just like I’d asked him to do. My body was flooded with effervescent bubbles, and he wasn’t even in the same room with me yet.
I got ready for the day, tempted to put on something different than leggings and a sweater, but also not wanting to try too hard. I didn’t want to make it look like I was expecting something from him even when it was what we’d hinted at. I still shaved my legs but stopped myself from going full out.
I gave my flushed cheeks a wry shrug in the mirror before going to the kitchen, making a pot of coffee, and turning the ovens on. I slid the apple cakes and quiches in and set my alarm on my phone before heading out to the lab to check on the progress Jada and I had made. It was nice to be talking about this with someone who loved the idea of it as much as I did, even if Jada did glaze over at my chemical formulas.
I pulled on all my gear and went through the plastic where my feet stalled. There was something off. Something wrong.
I took two steps back from the entrance and stared at the space.
Nothing was overtly out of place. Everything looked like it had the day before. There was just a scent hanging over the room, like someone with a lot of cologne had come and gone hours ago, and the air filtration system was having trouble dissipating it.
The garage door opened behind me, and Jada burst in, calling me, “Baioretto!”
I turned to look at her. She was wild-eyed, pulling on her robe over a satin nightgown. Her feet were bare, and there was a desperate air about her that she was trying to fight, pulling on an act of calm over the worry.
“I need your help,” she said.
“Okay?” My frown conveyed my confusion.
“I…just…come on,” she said. She pulled me outside. I protested, trying to remove my shoe covers and gloves, but she had a vise-like grip on my arm, yanking me in the direction of the house.
“Jada, what the heck?” I said, finally getting enough balance to pull myself from her hold. I tore off my shoe coverings, gloves, and hairnet and shoved them into the pockets of the lab coat.
