Chapter 36
The store is dark. Everyone has gone home. The twinkle lights in the front window display give a warmth to the quiet space.
It’s nearly ten o’clock, and I haven’t bothered Noah because I can hear him in there working. There is the methodical noise of his fingers on his keyboard, and they’ve been going non stop since we came back from Estes Park.
A few times I’ve taken him something to drink and a snack. He’s emerged to go to the bathroom, and we’ve shared a few stolen kisses in the back room. Otherwise, he’s been working.
I don’t feel the need to bother him right now, even though I’m exhausted and my bed is calling me. Tomorrow I need to be on my A-game. Especially if his agent is arriving and whoever Rachel Anderson is.
Pettiness did get the best of me. I’d been working on my book at the front counter, and I had to look up Rachel Anderson.
There are ten million Rachel Andersons. Narrowed down, I searched New York, then more specifically her relationship to Noah.
Nothing came up there. There is some relief, but his smile at her name still has me uneasy. That’s on me, I know that, but still …
I finally got a hit when I did a search that associated her with Dylan Collins, Noah’s agent.
Rachel Anderson is an associate literary agent under Dylan Collins at the agency that reps Noah.
Her photo on the website is a stellar one.
I’d want to work with her if I were an author looking for representation.
She has a look of professionalism with her just-the-right-length blonde hair with the perfect curl.
She has blue eyes that twinkle right off the screen, but they have knowledge behind them.
I’d guess she might be in her thirties, but she doesn’t scream book nerd at all.
Unfortunately, she screams that I’m insecure and worried that the man I’m having this brief, but promising affair with likes this much younger woman.
When I hear the knob on the office door turn, I quickly swipe away Rachel Anderson’s face from my screen and go back to my manuscript.
I turn around to see Noah stretching in the doorway. His arms are lifted over his head and his shirt rises, and exposes his stomach, which fuels me with need to touch. The office light illuminates him from behind like the god I really see him as.
“It’s ten o’clock,” he says, rubbing his eyes.
“It is.”
“You should have come to get me when you closed the store. Why are you sitting out here in the dark and I’m in there working when we could be at your house or in my hotel room?”
I chew on my bottom lip, still studying this man that I know my heart aches for already.
“You’re writing. I want to give you that time.”
He snorts out a laugh as he moves to me, standing so he’s pressed between my legs, in my space. “I’m always writing,” he says as he lifts his hands up into my hair.
“Always?”
“Usually,” he says as he dips his head and brushes his lips across mine. “Let’s stay at the hotel tonight. I’ll order us up some room service and we can watch crappy TV.”
“I have to be back here at eight. I don’t have anything else to wear.”
“Bring your suitcase from this weekend and we’ll have them do the laundry,” he says now trailing kisses down my neck. “I want to be with you, and my place is closer.”
My eyes close as his mouth works against my sensitive skin. “You’re not good for me, Noah Carter,” I say as my breath thickens.
“I’m good to you,” he says and I laugh.
“That you are.”
Noah is the kind of man you wouldn’t notice in a crowd, unless you were a die-hard fan, but he’s the kind of man that can get stuff done with a smile and wink.
My clothes from our trip are being cleaned.
Dinner was delivered and set up on a table while we were in the shower. Something like that would have once made me very uncomfortable, but I suppose I was much too comfortable to care that someone was in the room.
Now we’re laying on the bed, wrapped in hotel robes, watching late night TV when we should be asleep.
“I never had this,” I say, my head rested on Noah’s chest, his hand brushing down my hair.
“What? Late night TV?”
I chuckle. “No, comfort like this.”
He adjusts to look at me. “You and your husband never did this?”
“No.”
“Why?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. It truly was a doomed relationship from the start.”
He squeezes me to him. “Abby and I did this all the time.”
“All the time?”
“All the time,” he says again, his hand still holding me in place against him. “The moments where you can just have peace with someone is the best.”
“And we have that?” I ask. Noah shifts to look down at me.
“Of course we do. Look at us,” he says and I take it in, not having even put it all together until that moment. Noah and I are comfortable just in one another’s presence. This isn’t just sex. This is a full on, two-week-old relationship, which only has a few more days left.
“Em, can’t you see yourself doing this with me for years to come?”
I blink up at him. I don’t want to tell him that I can. He’ll be gone in one week. One week!
Now the comfort seems strained. I move from him slightly, adjust the robe so that I’m fully covered, and fold my hands on my lap. Noah does the same to mimic me.
“We’re going to see each other after, right?” I ask.
“We talked about it, yes.”
“I know. I just don’t see how it’s going to work. I mean I can’t leave my store all the time. You have movies being made and books to be published and more to write. And you have your family and Abby’s family to spend time with, and?—”
“And you’re trying to come up with reasons that this isn’t going to work before we even give it a go.”
I pull in my lips. That’s exactly what I’m doing.
“You’ll come visit me?” I ask, but it’s weak.
“Every chance I get.” Noah scoots over the inch to press our bodies together, still sitting up next to one another. “And you will come to New York as a tourist and let me show you around.”
“I know all the sights,” I remind him.
“Not the way I do.”
“You never leave your apartment,” I remind him, now looking him in the eye.
“And maybe that’s the only sight I want you to see,” he says as he leans in and takes me under with a kiss that leads us to unwrapping our robes.