She looked at him, big eyes under long innocent eyelashes. “After I learn to read?”
“With your life. Forever.”
She will be with us forever, his elk said confidently.
But where did that put them?
Her eyelashes might be innocent, but Gizelle’s eyes were fathomless and ancient. “Forever is an arbitrary point in time,” she said grimly. “And I’ve already been there.”
Conall had no answer for that.
Fortunately, she continued, voice light again. “I would like to be useful,” she said. “I want to do something that helps Scarlet the way she’s helped me. I tried helping at the bar but I dropped all my glasses and bottles. And Chef won’t let me help in the kitchen.”
“What do you want to do?” Conall pressed. “For yourself. What’s something that you like to do?”
Gizelle blinked at him, as if it had never occurred to her before. She was close enough that Conall could have touched her without trying. It took conscious effort to keep from reaching out to her every few moments, to brush the loose hair back from her face, or just to see if her skin was as warm in the sunlight as it looked.
“I like to run,” she said slowly. “And I like it when Scarlet reads to me, so I think I will like reading.” Her eyes widened with a sudden thought. “Will you read to me?” she begged.
At that moment, Conall would have read her the Boston phonebook in one sitting. “Anything you’d like.”
Gizelle pointed at the sign.
“Shifting Sands Resort.”
She pointed at the smaller sign.
“Authorized Guests Only. No Predation.”
Gizelle all but dragged him back down into the resort, dancing ahead of him and gesturing enthusiastically every time he paused. They stopped at every sign. Some of them she had memorized, mouthing along with him.
She made him read the entire staff bulletin board, including notes about shifts in the restaurant that referenced someone named Breck who was surely the waiter-who-wasn’t-Brick and repair notes for Travis and Wrench, confirming that as an unexpected name. Graham must be the gardener with the machete.
“I want my name to be up there,” Gizelle said, once Conall had puzzled through all the handwritten comments and baffling assignments.
“You don’t want to go somewhere else someday?”
Gizelle had to repeat her reply, because she glanced away the first time. “Where else is there?”
“The whole world out there,” Conall said. “Paris, maybe? America? Africa? Great Britain?”
“Boston,” she said flatly. “You want to know if I’d go to Boston.”
Conall rapidly re-evaluated
her. Again.
“I have a business there,” he told her. “An... important business.” But even as he said as much, he had to wonder.
He had poured himself into his business when his music career came to a crashing halt. He’d built it from a niche novelty business into a global chain, expanded it into clothing, and diversified it overseas. Time had run a cover article on him that hung, framed, in his office. He hadn’t read the article after the lengthy interview, but he knew it had lingered poignantly over his disability and his shattered promise as a musician.
Lemonade from lemons, everyone praised him. The elk antlers that twisted into Celtic knots framing a guitar was one of the most respected logos in the modern high end instrument and supply industry today.
Now he was thinking about throwing it all away to live on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere, filled with the strangest people he had ever met, for a gorgeous wild woman who wouldn’t even let him touch her.
And he was seriously considering it.
Chapter 21