“You aren’t even going to miss me when I go to Boston,” Conall teased.
Gizelle sat up, pulling the headphones off. “Of course I will,” she said in sudden seriousness. “A thousand books wouldn’t fill that emptiness. Every second will try to be forever and I will have to remember how to run without legs.”
Realizing that his teasing had missed its mark, Conall cleared a spot next to her to sit and took her hands. Someone barely in range of hearing was singing a Christmas carol loudly and off-key, but he couldn’t bring himself to be irritated about their lack of pitch.
“I will come back,” he reminded her. “You have a phone now, and anyone will help you text me whenever you want. I will video call you every evening that the Shifting Sands connection is good enough to make it work and I will think of you every moment that I’m gone and I will come back as soon as I can.”
“And then you’ll stay forever?” she asked plaintively, dark eyes like pools to eternity.
“Forever is an arbitrary point in time,” Conall reminded her. “And you’ve already been there. But next time you go, I will be at your side.”
Gizelle looked at him skeptically, eyes narrow. “Don’t be weird,” she told him, with a slow smile blooming on her expressive mouth. “That’s my job here.” She lay back among the gifts again. “I love everything about Christmas,” she said with satisfaction. “Everything except the figgy pudding, which was as awful as Breck said it would be.”
“I like it,” Conall protested. “It’s rich.”
“You like coffee, too,” Gizelle reminded him. Then she sat bolt upright. “Your Christmas present!” she said in alarm. “I still have to give you yours!”
She somehow managed to navigate the heaps of gifts and untangle herself from the earphones without toppling any of the piles, and she returned around the bed to drop her gift into Conall’s waiting hands.
/> Not touching her, he couldn’t hear the rustle of the paper as he carefully unwrapped it.
Gizelle had wrapped it thoroughly, in several layers of clashing color, and she watched him peel through them and bounced on her toes. The weight and density of the package made him guess what it would be before the final layer came off and he opened the box.
“This is the lock from Neal’s cage,” he said, turning it over in his hands. “Are you sure you want to give me this? It is the heart of your hoard.”
“You are the heart of my hoard,” Gizelle said, giving it a reverent caress and then closing his fingers around it. “I don’t need it to anchor me anymore.”
“I will carry it everywhere with me,” Conall promised, only belatedly wondering what airport security was going to think of the lump of metal; it had enough heft to be a serious weapon. He smiled at Gizelle. “I love it,” he assured her. “I love you.”
Gizelle let him draw her into his arms as he put the lock down on the bed beside them. “I love you,” she breathed.
Then her mouth was on his and her hands were cradling his face. He put arms around her and wondered where on the bed it would be safe to lay her down.
He had just decided to take her to the second bedroom when a knock on the door reminded him. “There’s more!” he said, breaking the kiss.
“More than love?” Gizelle asked in confusion, drawing away to look at him.
“More Christmas presents,” Conall said, grinning.
“More than this?” Gizelle exclaimed in wonder, gesturing around the crowded room. “What more could there be?”
Conall stood, lifting Gizelle and setting her on feet away from him. “Come see,” he said.
She scampered to the door with him. “It’s Scarlet,” she told him. “But she feels confusing.”
Conall opened the door, and true to Gizelle’s prediction, it was Scarlet.
She had company.
“Take them,” the resort manager said through clenched teeth. “Just take them.”
“Kittens!” squealed Gizelle. “Conall, you got me kittens!”
Two kittens were in Scarlet’s outstretched arms, one a striped gray with a white belly, the other cream-colored with orangish Siamese points.
“I am doubling the price of your lease,” Scarlet told Conall.
“A bargain at twice the price,” Conall said magnanimously.