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I had left my purse at the table, so I couldn’t even call Suzie to come rescue me. I peered into the window, trying to see if anyone was in the bathroom, but I couldn’t see a damn thing through the frosted glass.
Welp. This was my life now. I lived on this window ledge. Maybe I could train a squirrel to bring me food.
“Nora, what the hell are you doing?”
I let out a startled shriek and gripped the brick wall to steady myself. Slowly, I turned around. “Hi, Michael.”
“Nora.” He looked up at me, hands on hips. “I left my wallet in the car and came out to get it, and what do I find? You. On a windowsill. Ten feet off the ground. Wearingthat. What. The. Hell. Are you trying to break your neck?”
“Don’t get mad, okay?” I said. He stared back silently, promising nothing. “Here’s the thing. You know I promised to tell Suzie about us tonight, but I haven’t gotten a chance yet, and she needs to hear it before I tell anyone else. And you’re here, and Grant is here, and I don’t know, I panicked…” I couldn’t look him in the eye, so I focused on the view instead. I could see Hart Mountain from here, a dark, hulking shape against the night sky. I was pretty sure it was judging me.You think you can be a good mom? Really?
“Grant? Your ex?”
I nodded. “I don’t even know what he’s doing here. He said he had to work late when he asked me to pick up Brandon.”
“So you came out here to…What, exactly? Ponder where it all went wrong?”
“I was going to jump out the window and go home.”
He looked at the ground, hands still on his hips. “It’s a long way down.”
“I noticed that.”
“You don’t have your purse, which I assume has your car keys.”
“This wasn’t exactly a well-thought-out plan.”
He burst out laughing.
“It isn’t funny,” I said, even though I suspected I was wrong about that, from a witness’s perspective.
“Kitten, it’s fucking hilarious.”
I glared and rubbed my arms for warmth. The other thing I hadn’t brought on my ill-fated journey to the ladies’ room was my coat. Sometime in the last two weeks autumn had started in earnest. I could smell snow in the air. “When you’re done laughing, do you think you could get me down? The window doesn’t open from the outside.”
He stopped laughing, tilted his head to the side, and considered my predicament. “I could send Suzie into the bathroom to open the window.”
“I would rather you didn’t. In fact, if you could go ahead and promise to never tell anyone about this, that would be great.”
“Hm,” he said noncommittedly. “I think the best thing to do is for you to hold onto the ledge, slide down as far as you can, and I should be able to get you from there. Can you do that without ripping your dress?”
I would worry about extracting a promise of silence from him later. “I can do that.”
His lips twitched and for a moment I thought he was going to laugh again, but instead he just looked at the ground. When he looked up again, his face was completely serious. “You tell Suzie tonight, after dinner. No more sneaking around.”
“Okay,” I agreed immediately. This secret had gotten me into enough trouble as it was. It was time to be honest.
He moved next to the wall and I slowly lowered myself down until I was hanging by my fingers. The brick bit into my skin. It didn’t matter, though, because I only had to hang for a second and then Michael managed to wedge himself between the wall and my body, his hands gripping my bare thighs under my dress, and maneuvered me so that I was sitting on his shoulders.
He was laughing again. Of course. “Nice underwear, babe.”
I growled. “You can put me down now.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I kind of like you right where you are.”
I smacked him lightly on the top of his head, like a drum. That just made him laugh harder. “Jackass.”
“You love me,” he said.
