My heart cracks and spills happiness through me like poured sunshine, painting the moment golden and glowing. “You did?”

He nods, tucking a loose wisp of hair back into my updo. “I could have asked what you’d find most fun, but I wanted to surprise you, and since I’m not precisely the fun expert, I went with a hunch and here we are. But we can go anywhere. Home. The movie theater. A diner. At least, until we’re due at the tattoo parlor. Though I suppose I could reschedule that.”

My eyes widen. “Wait, what?”

Jamie frowns. “What?”

“You. In a tattoo parlor. What are you going to do in a tattoo parlor?”

He bristles and rakes a hand through his hair, making the waves a little less perfect and tousled. “I don’t appreciate your incredulity, Beatrice. What do you think’s going to happen when I walk into a tattoo parlor? Am I going to vanish into a puff of prudish smoke?”

I laugh, then shiver. It’s getting cold out here, and my wrap’s a flimsy piece of sheer black fabric. “Maybe, after you give it a hygiene audit.”

“Ha-ha.” Jamie shrugs off his coat and wraps it around me. It’s warm and heavy, and it smells like his cologne, a whisper of sage and cedarwood and foggy mornings. “There,” he says. “Better?”

I nod. “Thank you.”

“I’m good for something, at least.” He sniffs, adjusting the jacket so it’s wrapped tighter around me. “Apparently not tattoo parlors, though.”

“Hey!” I shoot a hand out from beneath the jacket and yank him close by the shirt. “I was just teasing you. But seriously . . . why do you want to go to a tattoo parlor?”

He lifts his chin, playing at being miffed, but I can see a smile tugging at his mouth as he opens the door to the karaoke bar. The smell of fried food and cheap beer wafts out, chased by a raw, soulful voice belting Janis Joplin.

“Why, Beatrice,” he says, guiding me ahead of him. “To get a tattoo of course.”

—

“They booed us!” Jamie yells. He curls his arm around me as we shoulder our way out of the karaoke bar and into a misty October rain, our cab mercifully waiting at the curb. “They actually booed us!” Jamie is indignation personified.

I smile up at him, cheeks aching, tears and rainwater streaming down my face. I have never laughed so hard. “I mean, do we blame them? I can’t tell a howling dog from a world-class singer, and I know what we just did was an offense to the human ear.”

Jamie opens the car door and gently guides me in. “They could have at least been more gracious about our effort.”