8. Lisa
Eight
Lisa
I wake up alone. That’s the first thing I notice. The second thing I notice is that I am warm. Something small and grey is purring faintly, curled against my hip on top of the comforter, looking at me like I’m the houseguest.
“Oh,” I say out loud, laughing softly. “Hi, baby.”
The cat blinks.
“Traitor,” I whisper.
She does not deign to respond.
I sit up slow.
The bed is empty on his side but still faintly warm, the shape of his head still on the pillow.
Get yourself together, woman.
I try to put the rest of last night together.
It comes back in pieces. His mouth. The wall. His hand fisted in my hair. His head between my legs. His tongue. My thighs press together under the sheets, and I make a small sound, and Imelda flicks her tail at me.
I look down at myself. My dress, rumpled to hell. My panties, gone…the bastard tucked them in his pocket like a damn souvenir…and my whole body sore in places that have not been sore in… ever!
I get out of bed because if I lie in it one more second I am going to lose my mind. My bare feet hit the wood. I stand in the middle of the bedroom for one second and look at the nightstand on his side…the small armory cleared overnight. He took his weapons.
I walk to the bathroom and shut the door behind me, lean on it, and look at myself in the mirror over the sink.
My hair is half out of its bun and the wrong kind of half.
My mouth is swollen… like a teenager who’s been kissed for the first time in her life by somebody who knew what he was doing.
There’s a small bite-mark on the side of my neck just under my ear that I don’t remember.
There’s another at my collarbone. The neckline of my dress has slipped sideways…
The woman in the mirror is smiling like a damn lunatic. I shake my head and make her stop. Splash cold water on my face, rinse my mouth, take out my bun and try to put my hair back together… and fail, ending up with a worse knot than I started with. Fuck my life.
Go put on a real bra, brush your teeth, and walk down the stairs like a grown woman.
I do one of those things. I brush my teeth. I do not go to the guest room for clean clothes because the guest room is at the other end of the hall and I do not want to delay anymore, the way you do not want to delay when you are about to jump off a high dive.
I open the bathroom door and take the stairs slow.
Halfway down, I can smell coffee and I hear humming.
I stop on the bottom step.
I can’t see into the kitchen from here, only the hall. I take the last step, cross the hall, and stop in the kitchen doorway.
And I have to put my hand on the frame because my knees do something stupid.
He is at the stove.
Adam has changed out of last night’s clothes.
He is wearing nothing but a pair of grey sweatpants…
hanging low on his lean hips in a way that should be illegal…
bare chest, and Lord have mercy, the chest!
The wolf’s head tattoo on his right pectoral.
The mountain range across his collarbones.
The dark ink down both arms, across his ribs and disappearing into the waistband of his sweats.
The cut of his bulky shoulders. The flat of his defined stomach with that line of muscles running down it that, frankly, I thought only existed on male models.
But he’s here. He’s real. He’s a real man, in real life, in my kitchen, making coffee.
Bigger and more beautiful in daylight in sweats than he was yesterday in his suit, and that’s a sentence I would not have believed forty-eight hours ago.
Adam turns, sees me in the doorway with my hand braced on the frame, and his face softens. The Mad Scot of Edinburgh looks at me in my rumpled dress with my hair undone and my bare feet, and his face softens, like he is looking at some treasure he was hoping to find and was not sure he would.
Then his wicked mouth pulls up at one corner, eyes doing the slow head-to-toe thing, and Lord, I bet he is remembering!
“Mornin’, love.”
His voice is gravel, warmth, and Scotland, all at once, at seven in the morning, in my kitchen.
I open my mouth. Nothing comes out.
His lips twitch further. Then he picks up a mug from the counter and brings it to me with the milk and sugar containers.
I look down and focus on preparing my coffee. When I look back up at Adam, he’s watching me.
“Did ye sleep, love?”
“…some.”
“Mm.” He runs his knuckles down my cheek. “Good lass.”
I take a sip of the coffee because if I don’t put something in my mouth; I am going to do something I’ll pay for later.
It’s perfect. Nothing like the instant crap we’ve been surviving on.
Adam turns back to the stove. There’s a pan on, and he has an egg in his hand. He’s making breakfast. This dangerous mob boss is in my kitchen in low-hanging sweats, cracking an egg into a pan with one hand.
I am going to need to sit down.
Imelda jumps in my lap. I drink my coffee, staring at the muscles ripple on Adam’s broad back. All ink and tanned skin… and I don’t know what my life is anymore.
Footsteps come down the stairs, quick and light, and I have time for one panicked thought…she’s going to see him like this…before my daughter rounds the corner into the kitchen and stops dead in the doorway.
Jasmine is dressed for her shift in black jeans, her coffee-shop barista polo, hair in a ponytail, and light makeup. She has her apron rolled up in her hand, and her bag slung over a shoulder. Ready for the day.
She is also staring back and forth between Adam and me. Smirking. Taking in his bare chest, my messy hair and rumpled dress from yesterday…
I’m gonna die.
“Mornin’, lass.”
Adam doesn’t turn around. He clocked her without looking, and just cracks another egg into the pan.
“Coffee?”
“Um…yes, please.”
He turns and smiles at her.
“How d’ye take it?”
“Um. Milk. Two sugars.”
He makes her coffee, brings it to her where she has not moved from the doorway, hands it to her, and goes back to the stove.
Jasmine takes one sip, and I watch her eyes widen.
“Mom…”
“Drink your coffee, baby.”
“Ma, this is… the best coffee ever!”
“I know, baby.”
“It’s better than mine, and I work at a coffee place.”
Adam chuckles at the stove without turning around. “Had fresh beans sent over this mornin’.”
Jasmine looks at me with eyes the size of saucers, silently mouthing, ‘He had beans sent over.’
I mouth back, ‘I know.’
She mouths, ‘MAMA.’
I shake my head at her, holding back my giggles. She sits across from me, tucking her feet up under herself on the chair, grinning.
I love seeing my child like this.
Adam plates two eggs and a buttered toast and brings them across to me, sets them down, and lightly runs his knuckles across the back of my neck on his way. Jasmine sees it and bites her lip on a smile. Then he goes back to the stove and brings a plate for Jasmine.
“Eat.” He smiles at her again. “You have class today, lass?”
She finishes her bite before answering with a grin, “Yes.”
“What time?”
“Nine. Just one this morning, then I work the lunch shift.”
“When’re ye done?”
“Five.”
He pulls his phone out.
“Roman.” A beat follows. “Aye. Jasmine is leaving in…how long?”
She blinks up at him. “Uh… twenty minutes.”
“Twenty. Drive her to campus, then work.” He hangs up and pockets his phone.
Jasmine asks, uncertain, “…Roman?”
“One of my guys. He’s at the gate. He’ll drive ye wherever you need.”
“I have a car.”
“Aye, lass, ye do. And from now on, ye also have a Roman.”
Jasmine opens her mouth, but before she can say anything, Adam reaches into the pocket of his sweats, pulls out a freaking wad of bills the thickness of a folded newspaper, and slides it across the counter to her.
“Pocket money.”
My kid stops chewing.
“…What?”
“Walking-around money, lass. Bit of shoppin’ on the way home if ye want.”
Jasmine puts her fork down, looks at the cash, then at me. Then she looks back at Adam.
I say, very quietly, “Adam.”
“Aye, love?”
“That’s too much.”
He shakes his head, his handsome face serious, almost scary. “It’s not.”
“It’s more cash than either of us has ever handled.”
“Aye.” His expression doesn’t change. “And that ends today.”
The kitchen goes very quiet. Adam holds my eyes for a long second. He’s not flexing. He’s making a point. He is telling me that the part of my life where I count change is over.
Jasmine, very slowly, takes the cash.
“Thank you, Mr. Maksimov.”
“Adam, lass.”
“…Adam.”
He nods with a small smile. She sits there with the wad of cash on the table next to her plate, and her face open…
my daughter’s face is open…and she starts telling us about her professor who pronounces her name wrong.
Adam laughs loud from the chest. A real laugh, deep and beautiful.
The first I’ve heard out of him. And it’s like a gift.
A door opening. The future, shining brightly on me.
Oh God, have I only known this man for less than a day?
Jasmine giggles and tells us the rest of the story…
the professor said Jas-MEEN on the first day, she corrected him three times and now he just calls her Miss Venn.
She laughs again. Like a girl who is not Ray Venn’s grieving daughter, but just a twenty-year-old at her kitchen table with her mother and a giant man who finds her funny.
I drink my coffee, trying very hard not to cry.
I’m watching this man, this stranger I have known for sixteen hours…sit in my kitchen in sweatpants, bare feet, take care of my girl. Put money in her pocket. Have a driver ready for her at the gate.
I press my mouth against the rim of my mug because if I don’t, I might sob.
Jasmine finishes her plate, wipes her mouth, and stands.
She kisses the top of my head as she passes, and the lump in my throat gets worse.
Then she stops at Adam and looks up at him.
He looks down at her. She hesitates. Her hand comes up like she’s going to reach for him and then drops back down.
Like she doesn’t know if she’s allowed. Adam reaches one big arm out and gently pulls her into a side-hug.
“Have a good day, Jasmine. Be safe.”
“Thank you.” But she doesn’t move. She is, I realize, fighting tears.
He pretends not to see, turns back to the stove, picks up the pan and rinses it under the tap. He gives her the privacy of his back so she can collect herself, and Jasmine wipes her eyes fast with the back of her hand and turns and runs up the stairs.
Adam stands at the sink with his back to me, rinsing the pan, and I sit at the kitchen table with my hands wrapped around my coffee mug, realizing I don’t know how to live in the world that began this morning.
Three minutes later Jasmine comes back down.
“Bye, Mom, bye, Adam…”
The front door slams behind her. We hear her footsteps on the porch, the car door. The car starts, pulls down the drive, and then the sounds fade.
The house is quiet now.
Adam dries his hands on a dish towel, turns from the sink, and looks at me. Pupils blown. A slow, dragging look down the front of my dress. His mouth pulling up at one corner.
“Now, love.” His voice is low, gravelly, hot as fuck. “We’re alone.”