Once Ghosted, Twice Shy (Reluctant Royals, #2.5)

by Alyssa Cole

She’d thought that Fab had smashed their connection like a smartphone beneath a car tire, but all their data had been saved on a cloud drive somewhere, it seemed, and was happily downloading and ready to resume where they’d left off.

“Took you long enough,” she said, finally. Somewhere, the polite part of Likotsi’s mind chided her for blocking the flow of pedestrian traffic, but she didn’t start walking. She slowly adjusted the lapels of her coat and then the hem of each cuff. “Well. I’m certainly worth the wait.”

“This is wonderful,” Likotsi said. She knew that many people would ask what the point of something like this was, would find it precious or pretentious, but Likotsi adored things that took time and care to produce results that weren’t entirely necessary but added something special to the world.

filled with imposing old buildings and statues of the men credited with building America. She had never understood the veneration of these men, who took their own biases and made them into a country’s laws, but Americans were quite strange, after all.