Page 62 of When We Had Forever
Telemarketer, he mouths, then turns his attention back to the road. “Are youdrunk?”
The salesman apparently launches into something long-winded, because Michael stays quiet for agonizing moments.
“Look,” he finally says. To my abject astonishment, he actually raises his voice. He hasn’t done that in years. “Right now, you’re interrupting my wedding night, and the last thing—”
I can’t help it—I snatch the phone away. “Sorry,” I say into it. “What my husband means to say is that we’re busy being blissfully happy right now, and will be for the rest of our lives. Please don’t call again.”
I hang up before the telemarketer can respond and give Michael a significant look. “What on earth was that?”
He stares at me, then the phone. “Sorry. I don’t know. I just... I’ve been planning this for a long time. I don’t want anyone interrupting.”
I blow out a breath. “What was he trying to sell you, anyway?”
Michael’s gaze skitters away. “Who knows? He wasn’t making a lot of sense.”
“Did he actually speak English?”
“Yeah. But he sounded...confused.”
“Weird,” I say.
“Very.”
Silence settles in the car. I turn my attention to the window, where reflective highway signs zoom out of the dark. I crane my head as one flies by, then sit up straight, the odd moment forgotten. “Wait. You missed the exit.”
Michael blinks. “No, I didn’t.”
“For Sea-Tac? Yeah. It was a mile ago.”
“What? No. We’re not going to Sea-Tac.”
My breath catches, but I manage to keep my expression composed. Even while every last butterfly in my stomach drops dead midflight.
It’s a hotel.
An exceptionally beautiful hotel, composed of steel and glass and nestled within an old-growth forest halfway between Seattle and Seagrove.
Michael parks in a sparsely filled lot. The place sparkles like a lit jewel amid the shadowed woods. Gilded light streams from a towering array of windows, and in the lobby, a waterfall chandelier cascades from a soaring ceiling.
“Well?” Excitement suffuses Michael’s voice. “What do you think?”
I peer through the windshield. “It’s stunning,” I manage.
Really, it’s more than stunning. It’s a superlative display of crisp, contemporary beauty, all the more striking given the lush backdrop of night-cloaked woods. It’s just not what I expected.
“It’s mine,” he says, pride evident.
“It’s... Wait, what?”
“It’s mine.” Michael makes a thick sound of pleasure. “Well, notminemine. I don’t own it. But I designed it.”
My hand flutters to my chest as the ice beneath my sternum thaws. “You mean youmadethis?” I’ve never seen a Michael Drake original in person before.
“I did.”
I take a beat to reassess. The hotel looks like something out of a travel brochure for royalty. I’ve never stayed anywhere like it. I’ve never even set foot near a place like this.
“The best part is, we’re the only guests.” Michael sounds downright gleeful now. “The hotel doesn’t actually open ’til next month, but I negotiated a special condition in my contract. The owners are letting us stay for a week with a full staff on-site. We’ll have a personal chef, two masseuses, a riding instructor, a yoga teacher. Anything you want.”
