He nodded. “Thank you. Thank you for saying she was wrong and making me look at myself again. And for making me hear myself again. I’m working on putting together a band—so I won’t just do jams. I’ll do gigs, too.”
“That’s great!” she said, and she couldn’t help it, she grinned a huge dorky grin at him, and he grinned right back. “But I hope—”
He was already nodding. “And I’ll be a music teacher. I owe you more thanks for bringing that back to me. I had twelve calls this week from new students, Hav, and I’ve already had to turn someone down because I just couldn’t fit her into the schedule.”
“Oh,” she said, her heart too tight with emotion again to speak. But not panic this time. Joy.
“I’m not a pop star.”
“No,” she agreed.
“But I also realized that these are all costumes we put on. I can be a pop star for a few months, if that’s what it takes to help my dad. I can go to fund-raisers and wear tuxes and give speeches. I can wear a suit and take you on a really romantic date.”
“Yes,” whispered Haven, feeling as if it was a superhuman effort to hold her whole body together and keep her feet on the ground, when she wanted to fly apart and float away. “And I realized—”
“That you can let your hair down and cry mascara streaks on your face, even in public?”
For some reason, that made her start to cry again, and he put his arms around her and held her while she got it all out of her system.
After a few minutes she was done, and she wiped mascara off her cheeks with the back of her hand, tidying up as best she could. Someone was going to show up any minute who knew her, and she was still Haven Hoyt. And Mark was okay with that. He would put on tuxes and suits and go where she needed to go and be who she needed him to be.
“I have an idea,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“Let’s go on both our dates.”
“How would we do that?”
“I will go to the bathroom and fix my hair and makeup,” she said. “And we will go inside Charme and claim our table and eat. And then I will take you on your date.”
“Okay,” he said. “Where are we going on my date?”
“It’s a surprise,” she said.
* * *
HE DIDN’T MIND Charme tonight. He didn’t mind the pretentiousness of the decor or the schmoofiness of the food or the overbearing waitstaff. He sat across from Haven and looked into her big dark eyes and tried not to let his gaze get stuck in her cleavage, out of respect, even though it took a lot of willpower because that cleavage was a work of goddamned art.
She was telling him about her revelation, moments before the phone conversation he’d overheard, about not wanting to be with anyone but him. About the fact that he wanted her to “come as she was”—
“Hell, yeah,” he said, huskily, and her eyes got darker and smokier, and her lips parted just enough to make his mouth go dry. Under the table, her leg slipped between his. The table was just big enough that they couldn’t really get up to any mischief, which was okay with him, for now, because he had such a big, joyful sense of possibility. She was his tonight and tomorrow night and all the nights after that, in private and in public and wherever they went. He’d have plenty of time to get her messy.