“Yes, Barrett?”
“I love you,” he whispers.
I gasp, the words not at all what I was expecting . . . but everything I’d hoped to hear come from his sweet lips.
He stutters at my reaction and I panic that he’s going to recant his declaration before I can get my head together.
“Barrett,” I say, interrupting his bobble of a response.
“Yeah?”
“I love you too.”
The words sound like a song coming from my mouth, a set of words I was prepared to never utter to a man again. But the fact that I’m saying them and not just willingly, but with my entire heart and without a smidgen of regret, makes my heart sing too.
“You do?” he asks, a tremble in the words.
“I really do.”
He laughs a weak, quiet rumble. “Damn it, Alison. I thought you were going to tell me to go fly a kite.”
“Only if that kite is going to carry you over here,” I breathe. “You just took me by surprise, that’s all.”
“But was it a good surprise?”
I grin until my cheeks ache. “The best surprise of my life.”
Barrett
THE DEFINITIVE SOUND OF HEELS against the hardwood tells me who just pulled up. The headlights had brushed past my office window, but I couldn't make out the model of the car before it pulled in. When the key was used and the alarm turned off, the possibilities narrowed tremendously. But the heels were a dead giveaway.
"Knock, knock." My mother's voice rings through my office. When I look up, she's standing in the doorway. Wearing a dark purple dress and pearls, she looks like she's sent straight from Central Casting. The perfect mother.
"Hey," I say, sinking back in my chair. "What brings you by this late?"
"Just checking on my eldest. I'm allowed to do that, aren't I?"
"Absolutely," I grin, happy to see her. "Come in."
She strides in the room with her usual grace, just like Camilla and Sienna do. They are beautiful and composed, yet can be lions when necessary. It's what I love most about them. It’s what I love about Alison too.
Sliding into a leather chair facing my desk, she looks at me. Her eyes search me the way a mother's do, trying to decide how I am before she asks. "How are you?"
"Been better. Been worse."
"How's the campaign coming along?"
"Almost over."
"You say that like you're happy about it."
I shrug and kind of grimace. I don't even bother trying to hide shit from her. She always knows.
"I'm proud of you. You know that?" sh
e asks and I know to brace myself. She always starts out with a compliment before really getting to what she means. "But this—what you're going through right now—is why I didn't want you in politics, honey."
"It's not terrible."