“I miss you so much, Shay. Everything I thought meant something in my life doesn’t anymore without you here. The club, my life, none of it means anything now that you’re not here with me.”
“I know, baby, but it’s just for eight months more.”
“What’s Copenhagen like?”
“Cold. Snowy. Pretty much the opposite of Tampa. I work all the time and look forward to talking to you every night. That’s about all I do.”
“Then not somewhere we want to go, right?”
She smiled and shook her head. “No. I don’t think I want to live in Copenhagen after my time there is up. But I have a surprise for you.”
I looked down at her to see her grinning from ear to ear. “What’s that?”
“While I’m here, I’m talking to Dr. Taduch about a position at the university for when I get back. He emailed me a week or so ago and told me about it, so I sent all my materials in to apply already.”
“So after the year is up you might be back here to stay?” I asked, my heart filling with joy at her news.
“Yeah. It might just be for a year, but that could give us some time to figure out what we want to do when we grow up.”
“Will you be able to come back for Cash and Olivia’s wedding?”
Shay shook her head. “I don’t think so. The soonest I could come back for a visit would probably be August. I think we all have a week off then.”
“That’s only four months,” I said quietly, trying to convince myself it wasn’t that long.
Snuggling up against me, she pressed her lips against my neck and nuzzled my skin. “And then four months later I’ll be back.”
“I know. Not too long.”
Not very convincing.
She whispered, “But then I’ll be back and we can spend every night together like this. Deal?”
“This isn’t as good as the last time you offered me a deal a few hours ago,” I said, trying to find the humor in what made me feel like shit.
Shay sat up next to me and drummed her fingers on my stomach. “What if I told you something I think will make you smile?”
I crossed my arms behind my head and nodded. “You don’t have to go back and you’ll stay here with me forever?”
She gave me a look that told me I was being difficult and shook her head. “No, but I think this will still make you smile.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Do you remember the first day we met—the day you and Kane made that infamous bet?”
“Yeah…”
I wondered if she was about to tell me Kane had said something to her about our bet now that she and the rest of my family were close enough to keep secrets from me.
“Well, I made a little bet of my own that day.”
I was intrigued. “A bet? About what?”
“I was so furious with you after how you acted that I bet Carrie I could make you, one of Tampa’s biggest players, fall for me.”
I knew there was a reason I couldn’t resist her from the minute we met. Few women had confidence like she did, and even fewer could back it up. Shay sat there looking at me with a playful expression that made me want to take her in my arms and never let her go.
“So you bet you could get me, and I bet I could get you? I guess we’re not so different after all, Shay Callahan.”
Leaning down, she kissed me sweetly and snuggled up against me again. “Who’d have thought it, Stefan March?”
She was right. In many ways, we were as different as night and day, but that feeling I’d had the moment I met her hadn’t been just physical. I’d been with more women than I cared to remember, but even though I didn’t know it that day, I’d met the one who could beat me at my own game.
Maybe winning wasn’t the most important thing after all.