“Something I hope you’ll like.” He stopped at a door, took out a key. He unlocked the door, opened it, gestured. “After you.”
She stepped inside, her breath catching as she saw the spacious room. Her hand fluttered up to her throat as she crossed the black and white checkerboard tiles into a parlor where candles flickered, and red lilies speared lavishly out of glass vases.
The colors were deep and rich, long windows adding the sparkling lights of the city. In front of one, a table was set for two, and a bottle of champagne sat in a gleaming silver bucket.
There was music playing, slow, soft Memphis blues. Stunned, she turned a circle, saw the spiral staircase that led to a second level.
“You . . . you did this?”
“I wanted to be alone with you.”
Her heart was still in her throat as she turned to face him. “You did this for me?”
“For both of us.”
“This beautiful room—just for us. Flowers and candles, and God, champagne. I’m overwhelmed.”
“I want you to be.” He stepped to her, took both her hands. “I want tonight to be special, memorable.” And brought them to his lips. “Perfect.”
“It’s sure off to a good start. Harper, no one’s ever gone to so much trouble for me. I’ve never felt more special.”
“It’s just the start. I ordered dinner already. It’ll be up in about fifteen minutes. Plenty of time for us to have that drink. How do you feel about champagne?”
“I feel like I couldn’t settle for anything less right now. Thank you.” She leaned to him, took his mouth for a long, warm kiss.
“I’d better open that bottle, or I’ll forget the lineup of events.”
“There’s a lineup?”
“More or less.” He walked over to lift the bottle from the bucket. “And just so you can relax, I gave Mama the number here. She’s got that, your cell, mine, and I made her promise to call if Lily so much as hiccups.”
He popped the cork as she laughed. “All right. I’ll trust Roz to keep it all under control.”
She did a little spin, just couldn’t help herself. “I feel like Cinderella. Minus the evil stepsisters, and well, the pumpkin. But other than that, me and Cindy, we’re practically twins.”
“If the shoe fits.”
“I’m going to wallow in this, Harper, I may as well just tell you that. I don’t know how sophisticated I can be when I just want to jump up and down, go racing around to look at everything. I bet the bathrooms are amazing. Do you think that fireplace works? I know it’s too hot for a fire, but I don’t care.”
“We’ll light it. Here.” He handed her a glass, tapped his to it. “To memorable moments.”
She held the moment, the glow of it. “And to men who make them happen. Oh, wow,” she said after the first sip. “This is really good. Maybe I’m dreaming.”
“If you are, I am, too.”
“That’s all right then.”
He touched her, skimming his fingers over the back of her neck, exposed by her upswept hair. Then with the lightest of pressure eased her toward him. The knock on the door brought on a wry grin.
“Prompt service. I’ll get it. Once they’ve set up dinner, we’ll be completely alone.”
HE MADE IT all happen, she mused. The big picture, the tiny details so the evening unfolded for her like the pages of a storybook. And because of him, she was sitting in an elegant suite, sipping champagne with the romance of candlelight, the shimmer of firelight. Flowers scented the air. There was a lovely meal she could barely taste through the anticipation bubbling in her throat.
Tonight, they would make love.
“Tell me what it was like for you, growing up,” she asked him.
“I liked having brothers, even when they pissed me off.”
“You’re close. I can see that whenever they come to visit. Even though they live away from Memphis, the three of you are like a team.”
He topped off her glass. “Did you wish for sibs when you were a kid?”
“I did. I had friends and cousins to play with, but I did. A sister especially. Somebody to tell secrets to in the middle of the night, or even to fight with. You had all that.”
“As kids, it was like having a personal gang, especially when David came along.”
“Bet the four of you drove Roz crazy.”
He grinned, lifted his glass. “We did our best. Summers were long, the way they’re supposed to be when you’re a kid. Long, hot days, and the yard, the woods, they were the whole world. I remember how it smelled, all green and thick. And this time of year, how you’d hear the cicadas all night.”
“I used to leave my window open a little ways at night so I could hear them better. I bet y’all got in plenty of trouble.”
“Probably more than our share. You couldn’t slip much by Mama. She had this radar, it was a little scary. I remember how she’d be in the garden, or in the house doing something, and I’d come around and she’d just know I’d been doing something I shouldn’t’ve been doing.”
She propped an elbow on the table, cupped her chin in her hand. “Name something.”
“The most baffling, at least at the time, was when I was with a girl the first time.” He drenched one of the strawberries in whipped cream, held it out for her to bite. “I came home having had my first sample of paradise in the back-seat of my much-loved Camaro, about six months after my sixteenth birthday. She came into my room the next morning, and put a box of Trojans on my dresser.”
With a shake of his head, he polished off the berry. “She said, and I remember this very well, that we’d already talked about sex and responsibility, about being safe and smart and careful, so she assumed that I had used protection, and would continue to do so. Then she asked if I had any questions or comments.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘No ma’am.’And when she walked out the door, I pulled the covers up over my head and asked God how the hell my mama came to know I’d had sex with Jenny Proctor in my Camaro. It was both mystifying and humiliating.”
“I hope I’m like that.”
His eyebrows lifted as he coated another berry. “Mystified and humiliated?”
“No. As smart as your mama. As wise as that with Lily.”
“Lily’s not allowed to have sex until she’s thirty, and married a couple of years.”
“Goes without saying.” She bit into the berry he offered, mmm’d over it. “What happened to Jenny Proctor?”
“Jenny?” He got a look on his face, a kind of half smile that told her he was looking back. “Why, she just pined away for me. She was forced to go to California to college, and stay out there and marry a screenwriter.”