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are a sight for sore eyes,” he said,
wrapping me in his arms and kissing me softly on the lips.
    I felt myself melting into him, becoming a
puddle against his body, his arms pulling me close as the tension I’d been
feeling slid from my shoulders.
    “How was your day?” he asked me.
    “It was fine.”   I swallowed, wondering when and how I
should bring up the letter.   “How
was yours?”
    “Brutal,” he said, releasing me and returning
to his desk.   “The phone has been
ringing off the hook.   Apparently almost
getting killed is good for business.”   He glanced down at his computer, running his eyes over a document on the
screen.   “And then there are the
reporters.”
    “I know,” I said.   “There were a bunch of them waiting outside
your office.”
    “Did they bother you?” he asked, glancing up
sharply.
    “Not really,” I said.   “I mean, they yelled questions at me,
but they didn’t… they weren’t aggressive or anything.”
    “Good.”   He shut his laptop and grabbed his coat off the back of his desk.   He crossed the room to me and pulled me
to him, his hand resting on my hip.   “I missed you today, Charlotte.   You have no idea how much I’m looking forward to moving on from all of
this.”   He kissed me again, his hand
sliding down over my ass.   I felt my
body responding to his touch, the way his mouth felt against mine, the way he
tasted, the smoothness of his skin, the sensation of his tongue rubbing against
mine.  
    “Ready to go?” he asked when he finally pulled
away.
    His tone was light, his body language relaxed
and easy-going.  
    There was no sign of the horror that had
happened at Force, no indication that under his expensive suit were stitches
and staples holding his skin together because of something a madman had done to
him, had done to us.
    I reached into my bag, my fingertips grazing
the top of the letter as I averted my gaze from his.
    “What is it?” Noah asked, tilting my chin up
and forcing me to look him in the eye.   “Charlotte?   What’s wrong?”
    I opened my mouth to tell him.
    But then I imagined how the night would go.
    Noah would get dark.
    He would shut down.
    Our dinner would be ruined.   He might even spend most of the time
brooding, or even worse, calling people he knew to get the letters to stop.   I didn’t want that.
    We were finally getting to where I wanted to be,
where we could do the kinds of things normal couples did.
    “It’s nothing,” I said.
    “You sure?” he asked, his eyes searching mine.
    “Yes, I’m sure.”   I swallowed and pulled my hand from my
bag.   I didn’t care what was in that
letter.   That letter had nothing to
do with me or my future .   It was just an ugly mark on my past,
something that had happened to me, not that was happening to me now.
    What was happening to
me now was Noah and our life together.
    The fact that he might be about to ask me to
marry him.
    Was I going to put all of that in jeopardy because
of some stupid letter?
    I didn’t want to lie to him.
    But I didn’t want to risk our happiness more.
    “Everything’s fine,” I said.   “Everything’s amazing.”
    He smiled and slid my hand through his.
    “We’ll take the elevator down to the garage,”
he said.   “To avoid the reporters.”
    I nodded and let him lead me down the hall and
into the elevator.   We took it down
to the basement garage under Noah’s office building, and slipped into his car.
    “I’ve never seen this one before,” I said.
    “You haven’t seen many of my cars,” he replied
matter-of-factly, like it was the most natural thing in the world to own more
than one vehicle in a city like New York, where it could cost four figures a
month just to park one car, let alone several.
    “Where are we going?” I asked.
    He pulled out onto the street, turning the car
expertly as he smoothly joined the flow of traffic that was heading uptown.
    “To dinner.”
    “I know to dinner,” I said.