Chapter 10: Just Us

"Come and have dinner with me," Tripp said. "Properly. Just us."

I stood there in a towel with wet hair, and I said yes.

I don't know why.

Part of me was curious, and part of me wanted to see what he would do if I said no.

The rest of me was a woman who had waited five years for exactly this sentence.

An hour later I sat on the terrace of the Ocean Suite, in the green dress, which was dry now and creased.

There were candles and a silver dome over two plates and a bottle of champagne in a bucket.

The sea was right below us, black and glittering.

Camille was nowhere.

"I sent her to bed," Tripp said, pouring. "Poor girl, I've worked her to the bone. I wanted tonight to be ours."

"That's kind."

"It's overdue." He lifted the dome off my plate. Lobster, in butter. "I remembered you like it."

I did like it.

I had told him so once, at a dinner in our first year, and I was surprised he had kept it.

We ate.

He was good at this, the soft talk, the small jokes, the hand on the tablecloth turned palm up.

He asked about my drawing, and I told him about a children's book I'd been offered, and he listened and nodded and said, "You should take it."

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