Night Whispers - Leslie Kelly [76]
“Well, friends,” she said as she glanced at the clock, “we’re coming to the end of another Night Whispers. It’s been an interesting night. Do you feel better? I’ll be honest. I don’t. Sometimes, relationships just stink.”
On the other side of the booth, Brian began gesturing. Kelsey noticed there was another phone call. She frowned. She’d already passed the point when she accepted calls, but he looked insistent.
“Well, it seems we have one more late-night caller,” she murmured. Punching the connect button on her console, she said, “Good evening, caller, you’re on Night Whispers.”
“Lady Love? I’m in desperate need of help.”
A sudden rush of warmth flooded Kelsey’s entire body as she recognized Mitch’s voice. “How can I help you tonight?”
“I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself in a bit of mess with a woman I’m absolutely crazy about.”
She smiled, deciding to make him sweat. “Oh? Done something terribly stupid, have you?”
“Uh-huh. Terribly. I made her think I don’t want her exactly the way she is. She believes I want her to lose the very qualities that attracted me…until I thought I’d go out of my mind wanting her.”
His voice rolled over her entire body and Kelsey nearly curled up in her seat. “And you don’t?”
“Absolutely not,” he said vehemently. “She drives me crazy, she takes risks, she’s outrageous and flamboyant. But, oh, Lady Love, she brings out something in me I thought I’d lost a long time ago.”
“What’s that?”
A short silence ensued before he replied. “Passion. Passion for life, for pleasure, for everything around us. Sorry to tell you this, Lady Love, but this woman knows more about it than you ever will.”
Kelsey laughed softly into the microphone, saying, “Does she know how you feel?”
“Sure, she knows I’m in love with her.”
Kelsey sat upright in her chair, bumping her knees on a shelf under the console. He loved her? He was telling her he loved her? Now? On live radio?
“Are you sure she knows that? I mean, have you told her that?”
“I’ve told her in every way possible. I mean, she’s very intelligent—she doesn’t need things spelled out.”
“Yes…she…does,” Kelsey muttered tightly.
She heard Mitch’s soft chuckle, then he fell silent.
“Sometimes even a woman as sublimely intelligent as yours needs to hear these things said out loud once in a while,” she prodded.
“I love you?” he said with a scoffing laugh. “But that just doesn’t begin to express it. Besides, like I said, she knows.”
Kelsey gritted her teeth. “How?”
“How could she not? She knows me so well. She anticipates my moods, lifts my spirits with one smile, makes me laugh with a word. She can cause me physical pain if she cries. Every minute we spend together is more precious than the previous one. She has awakened me. She has helped me become a man with a future, instead of a man with promise. She’s shown me I can have everything I ever wanted, plus all the happiness I ever dreamed of.”
Tears gathered in the corners of Kelsey’s eyes as Mitch spoke.
“She is my first thought every morning, and my last wish every night. She is my past, and she is my future, and she’s everything in between.”
A long moment of silence hung heavily on the air, and Kelsey could not make her voice work. Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. Finally she breathed deeply and said, “I love you, too.”
KELSEY COULDN’T REMEMBER the words she used to wrap up her show. By five after two, she was in her car, driving through the dark streets of Baltimore.
When she arrived at the brownstone, she hurried to the front door and let herself in. The foyer was dark, and she felt a moment of misgiving. Then she sensed him. Her body reacted with the same instinctive longing she always felt when Mitch was near.
“Mitch?”
“I’m here, Kelsey.”
And suddenly he was