Jane took a deep breath and hugged me. "You come back anytime. This is home for you now, got it?"
I nodded. "Next summer, I would like to come home and work at your bookshop," I told her. "And eventually, I would like to buy in as a partner, using the money the Council is giving me for reparations for Dr. Hudson's kidnapping and general douchery."
"We'll talk about it," she said. "Silent partner."
"That's unlikely." I snickered.
Georgie was lingering near the door, frowning at us all. I approached her slowly.
"I will not miss you," she told me. "I won't even notice that you're gone."
"Me, neither. I will definitely not call you or Skype with you. And I will not insist that you send me pictures of Fitz every other week."
"Understood," she said. "We will have a distant and resentful relationship from here forward."
"Got it."
Cobra-quick, she slid her arms around me and squeezed. I patted her head.
"So you've got your laptop, your phone charger?" Gabriel asked.
"Yes," I said.
"Warm socks?" Jane asked. "Backup blood supplies?"
///
"Yes."
"I just worry," she said. "Those dorms can get cold."
"And I have a thermostat," I told her. "Right there in my room."
Jane hugged me again. "The unicorn room will always be yours."
"Will the unicorns still be there if I come back?"
"Don't push it."
Ben and I slid into the car. We laughed as we buckled our seatbelts and made various pre-road-trip adjustments to the radio.
Ben cleared his throat. "You know, when most boyfriends and girlfriends leave for college together, they don't leave from the same house."
"Don't make it weird," I told him.
"It's always going to be weird," he said. "You know, once we get home, we can come back to Jane's for a visit, any weekend you want."
I leaned over, stretching the seatbelt as far as it would go, to kiss him. "We're not going home," I told him. "We're leaving it."
"That was cheesy," he murmured against my lips.
"That's me, a big sentimental cheese ball."
"That's what I've always loved about you."
Can't get enough of Molly Harper's Half-Moon Hollow series?
Rare-book expert Anna Whitfield is delivering a package to Half-Moon Hollow when her plane goes down, and a sexy vampire comes to her rescue. He's clearly got ulterior motives, but does he want to date her . . . or devour her?
Where the Wild Things Bite
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Widow Libby Stratton arranged to be turned into a vampire after she was diagnosed with late-stage cancer. But she's struggling with her transition, and finds out the hard way that it sucks to be the only vampire member of the PTA . . .
The Single Undead Moms Club
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Gigi Scanlon is no longer an innocent teen. She's all grown up and looking for love, and her family and friends worry she'll go for the sexy, alluring vampire instead of a nice, safe human. But sexy and alluring, with a penchant for biting, could be just what Gigi wants . . .
The Dangers of Dating a Rebound Vampire
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Read on for a sneak peek of Molly Harper's next book
SWEET TEA AND SYMPATHY
A Southern Eclectic novel
Coming soon from Gallery Books!
Margot Cary leaned her forehead against the warm truck window as it bounced along the pitted Georgia highway. She closed her eyes against the picturesque landscape as it rolled by. Green, green, green. Everything was so effing green here.
Green was not her lucky color. It certainly hadn't blessed the opening of the botanical garden's newly completed Wesmoreland Tropical Greenhouse. Maybe it had been a mistake to carry the green theme so far. Green table linens, green lanterns strung through the trees, down to emerald-green bow ties for the catering staff. Weeks later, she still remembered the terrified expression on one waiter's face when she caught him by the arm before he carried his tray of crudités into the party space.
Despite her glacial blond beauty, the younger man practically flinched away from her touch as she adjusted his tie. Margot would admit that she'd been a bit . . . demanding in organizing this event. She had taken every precaution to make sure that this evening's black-tie opening was as smooth as Rosaline Hewitt's recently Botoxed brow. She'd commissioned a silk-leaf embroidered canopy stretching from the valet station to the entrance to prevent the guests' hairstyles and gowns from being ruined by the summer rain. She'd researched each invitee meticulously to find out who was gluten-free or vegan and adjusted the menu accordingly. She'd arranged for two dozen species of exotic South American parrots to be humanely displayed among orchids and pitcher plants and a flock of flamingos to wade through the manufactured waterfall's rocky lagoon.