Chapter Eleven #2
“He also absolutely did,” she added. “In fact, several times. In our kitchen.”
“The kitchen,” Marc repeated faintly, like he was taking inventory of every room in the house and deciding which ones he’d never enter again.
Goldie sipped her wine with the unhurried grace of a woman who’d made peace with all of life’s great questions and most of the small ones too.
“Sam threw out his back during a demonstration in 1987.” A small, luminous smile crossed her face.
“Worth it.” She then high-fived Glamma without looking away from her glass.
Martha patted Marc’s shoulder. “Flexibility is so important, dear. It allows the body to access positions that naturally encourage emotional connection. Research supports it.”
“What research?” Marc muttered, not as a question but as a quiet plea directed at no particular person.
“Scientific research,” Martha stated firmly. “I have articles.”
“I regret having ears,” Marc groaned and I imagined he was taking very small, very measured mental breaths inside his head.
I absolutely should not be encouraging any of this.
“Please,” I said, leaning forward with my chin on my hand, not-so-guiltily enjoying his discomfort, “continue with your yoga theories. I’m genuinely learning things.”
Marc growled—low, under his breath—not directed at anyone in particular, yet it landed directly in the center of my chest.
My whole body registered it before my brain had any input on the matter.
It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t even intentional, but everything in me went very still and then alert. A tuning fork struck, vibrating at a frequency I hadn’t previously known I had.
My thighs clenched together before I could stop them.
This was a problem.
A very specific, tortoiseshell-glasses-shaped, thoroughly repressed problem. That growl affected me in a way that I could never let Marc affect me.
Marc refocused with the determination of a man trying to find solid ground. “The first step is to secure at least twelve animals. Texting Theo now.” His thumbs moved efficiently across the screen of his phone. “Next, we’ll need to set up a practice session. What days work best for you?”
I pulled up my calendar with more focus than it required, grateful for something concrete to look at. “Not tomorrow. I have energy healing sessions and a card reading, so I don’t have a lot of flexibility.” I scrolled. “But I can make Thursday, late afternoon, work.”
“I’m fully booked until five.”
I nodded. “Can you see if Theo has any volunteers willing to join us, and any others who can help keep an eye on the animals?”
“Oh, sweethearts,” Goldie answered with the authority of someone who’d already made a decision. “We volunteer as your elderly tributes!”
“Elderly. Speak for yourself,” Martha grumbled. “I do Pilates three times a week.”
“The rest of the Kingsleys are very interested in joining,” Goldie continued as though Martha hadn’t spoken. “And with Marc and Theo that’ll be eleven.”
“I’m not participating.”
“Sure you are,” Glamma said pleasantly. Almost too sweetly. “How are you ever supposed to understand how it works if you’re standing in the corner with a scowl?”
“I’ve never done yoga. Besides, observing is a better role for me.”
“You will participate,” Glamma corrected.
Marc was already running calculations—his gaze darted around the room—checking for exits he knew weren’t there.
I couldn’t help it. Some responses just needed to be said. “Are you afraid you can’t keep up?” I teased.
His eyes cut to mine. “I run five miles a day. I think I can handle a little stretching.”
Game on.
“Sure,” I said pleasantly. “If that’s what you need to tell yourself.”
Good. Excellent. This was all very normal, professional almost, with a side of teasing. I was not at all thinking about Marc on a yoga mat while I stood at the front of the room, his body twisting in ways to show off the muscles I knew were hiding underneath his clothing.
I saw a flicker of something that looked like uncertainty in his eyes and decided to relent and be an adult. “We’ll be using beginner poses, anyway. The goal is to observe how the animals react to the various positions. I have plenty of mats, blocks, and straps for when we need modifications.”
“I do love a good strap,” Goldie mused. “There’s something so reassuring about knowing you’re properly held in place. Why, Sam and I used to—”
“Nope. Absolutely not,” Marc raised his hands, palms out. Hard stop.
Glamma grinned. “He blushes just like his grandfather.”
“He’s very easy to scandalize,” Glamma confided in me. “All the Kingsley men are. I’ve never understood it. Sex is a natural, beautiful part of human connection.”
“A gift, really,” Martha agreed.
“A renewable resource,” Gladys offered.
“I’m changing my phone number,” Marc announced to no one. “I’m moving. I’m going somewhere remote. Somewhere with no roads.”
“New Hampshire is lovely,” Goldie said, and I had to bite my lip to hold back my laughter.
“Goldie,” he said with a warning in his tone. “I do not need to hear about yours and Sam’s sexcapades. Save it for my grandmother.”
She held up her hands in surrender but looked delighted.
“I want to hear about these sexcapades,” I said, because I genuinely did, and also because watching Marc’s expressions cycle through their responses was the most entertainment I’d had in months.
Marc muttered something under his breath.
Goldie patted my arm warmly. “Maybe later, dear. Marc gets all tightly-wound when I discuss intimacy.”
“On that note,” Marc said, already standing. “I think it’s time for me to leave.”
I laughed and looked at the clock on my phone. It was later than I realized. “I should go, too.”
Glamma and the girls waved goodbye but stayed exactly where they were, like they’d staged the departure on purpose. Which maybe they had.
Outside the front door, the air felt different. Tension filled it as Marc and I stood there together, unsure of what to do next, but fully knowing things between us had changed.
He touched my arm. Gentle. Calm. “Can I have your number?”
I should have just said yes.
Instead, my mouth opened and said, “Planning to send scandalous yoga strap messages?” The teasing words popped out before my brain had any input on the matter.
His head lifted slowly.
His eyes found mine.
His gaze sharpened—clicked into focus—a gear engaging. The mild-mannered vet was still there, but beneath it something quieter, steadier, and considerably more dangerous than I’d been counting on.
“If I was going to do that,” he said, his voice dropping lower than I’d ever heard it. Rough, sexy, and certain, with an undertone of that growl from earlier. “You wouldn’t have to ask.”
My pulse forgot its job. Not teasing. Not a deflection. A promise.
I watched a flicker of surprise move across his face, a brief sense of awareness of his words, and then the resolution not to take them back.
Sweet mother of God. His words. His tone. My body throbbed and my girly parts pulsed.
I forced a grin because I had to do or say something else, or I might melt into the ground. “Touché, Kingsley.” I handed him my phone.
He held my gaze for one more beat before taking it. Heat hit my cheeks, air puffed from my lungs—short and breathless, a moan built at the back of my throat. If he didn’t turn away soon, I wasn’t going to be held accountable for my actions.
He handed my phone back to me. Then he turned in the direction of my car with that particular quietness he carried everywhere and opened the door before I’d even reached for the handle.
“I—” My usually reliable vocabulary malfunctioned as I stepped into the car. “Thank you.”
He shrugged, as though it hadn’t occurred to him that it might be notable.
Of course it hadn’t.
That was exactly the problem.
And that was dangerous information.
“Goodnight, Delaney.” He shut my door gently, deliberately, like it mattered. How he handled all the important things in his life.
Almost like I deserved to be handled the same way.
He walked to his car and didn’t turn back once.
Part of me waited to see if he would. The part of me that waited was a problem I was going to need to deal with later, privately, possibly with wine.
Hatred had been simple. Predictable and safe.
It had a shape I knew. An architecture I’d built and reinforced for twenty years. It explained everything about Marc Kingsley without requiring me to look any closer.
This—the noticing, the softness around the edges, the way he’d said “you wouldn’t have to ask” like he already knew what he was offering—this had no recognizable basis. It had no comfortable structure to hold on to.
And he didn’t even know he’d done it.
That was the worst part.
He’d just said it—quietly, with complete assurance—and then walked away as though he hadn’t handed me a thing I didn’t know what to do with and didn’t have the decency to take back, so I couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.
Twenty years of unshakable certainty.
Twenty years of knowing exactly who Marc Kingsley was and exactly how I felt about him.
And here I was, sitting outside his grandmother’s house with my heart beating irregularly in my chest, thinking about a man who opened car doors like it was just what you did and said quietly devastating things while wearing sexy tortoiseshell glasses.
I was absolutely, catastrophically screwed.