“You’re amazing,” I whispered, kissing him on the mouth.
He kissed me back and the kiss became deeper, more intense.
“What’s that about?” he asked, pulling back.
“I have a thing about mountains,” I said.
Understatement of the year.
“I know,” Will said, not understanding at all.
“Let’s go home,” I said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
I did tell him all about the fortune teller and her prediction, but only after we made love and I asked him again to forgive me for resigning. Lying against him, in his arms, his hand stroking my hair, he said, “I think you’re right, though, about not being Zoë’s nanny anymore.”
“You want me to quit after all?!”
I couldn’t believe my ears!
“I don’t want you to leave the house, though, or my life! But I do think it is confusing to her, us being together and Jade coming to visit and you looking after her. If she had another nanny, maybe she could learn to form a new relationship with you.”
I thought about it.
“But I would live here?”
“As my girlfriend,” he clarified. “And you could get a job doing whatever you wanted to, managing a guesthouse in the city, or a restaurant or opening your own place, whatever.”
I thought of so many things at once.
The opportunities this presented!
“Simone and I could open a restaurant,” I suddenly said. “She’d run the kitchen, I’d man the desk.”
“You see! Something like that!”
“And you want me to move in here, properly?”
“Yes. We can talk to Zoë about it, give her time to get used to the idea. But she needs to understand that you are the woman in my life and that there is space only for you and not for Jade.”
I liked the idea of that.
“You would, of course, have some decorating rights too,” he added. “Like if you wanted a big mural of Everest, for instance, put up on the wall…”
He was teasing me, I knew.
After the initial shock wore off at his office, I was able to appreciate how much I’d allowed the fortune teller’s words to affect my life, infecting every aspect of my decision-making, my choice of friends, where I worked. I had somehow lost track of the fact that what she had glimpsed had been my future, without me having to engineer or orchestrate it.
But I was so desperate for love and affection, I would have done anything to make sure it happened. I would even have ruined my only real shot at making it happen because it didn’t fit with my idea of how it was supposed to be.
The moment I saw the picture of the Himalayan mountains, towering over me like that, I’d known that this was what the fortune teller had seen. Will was my one true love, the man I was supposed to be with.
Not some fool in overly tight pants in Colorado, or a snowboarding freak with a fondness for bondage. With Will, it had felt right from the beginning and yet, I was always questioning it and him, trying to make him fit into an idea I had of what love should be.
“Be honest,” he said. “Was there a part of you that was looking forward to running the inn in New Haven?”
I thought about it.
“Yes, I think so. It was something different, you know. While the establishment was smaller than a resort, I liked the idea of being in charge and seeing if I could manage that.”