22. Old Flames #2
"Books are built straight out of real life," Amber counters, cool and calm, not rising to it by a single degree.
"Real experiences. Real, envisioned hopes.
Whole worlds set down on paper so the people reading them can finally believe that anyone at all gets to be loved.
" She takes a sip, watching him over the rim.
"We all deserve to feel it. Whether it turns out to be the true kind or the temporary kind is a separate conversation entirely.
But being loved — being fought for — that's rare enough on its own, in any packaging.
So if a person finds it, and the one they find it with happens to share their sex?
" She lifts her chin. "So be it. Why on God's green earth would I be mad about that? "
Marshall's watching her now the way I've seen him study a knot he means to work loose — like she's a puzzle worth every ounce of his patience. I know that look on him.
It means she's already won him over, and he simply hasn't decided yet whether to let her see it.
"Most people get mad," Marshall says.
"Most people get mad because they can't wrap their heads around somebody being happy in a shape they were never taught to picture.
So they call it a predicament. The not-understanding festers.
It curdles. It makes them miserable clean to their bones.
" She sets the mug back down. "That's not my burden to haul around.
Long as the intentions are clean and nobody's getting lied to, I don't much care what silhouette love shows up wearing. "
Well, then.
I sit there half a second and just let myself feel the certainty coming off her, easy and unbothered and sure.
She would have fit right in. If the timing had been a different animal. If the cards had come up another way for all of us. She'd have fit like she was cut for the spot.
She moves to step back toward her counter, and I don't so much decide to reach for her as my hands make the executive call without consulting the rest of me.
I catch her by the hips. She stops. I give one light, unmistakable tug, and she looks back down at me with a single eyebrow arched clean up into all that loose hair.
We don't say a thing for a beat. We just look at each other.
"We've got to leave in five," I tell her.
It is not what either one of us means, and she knows it isn't.
She settles down onto my lap anyway, getting comfortable, warm and soft and smelling like apricot gone all to honey — and underneath the honey, like me, the two of us mingled from a night I'd relive on a loop given half a chance.
It is doing precisely nothing to help the situation currently building south of my belt.
She shifts once, getting settled, and I bite down on a sound that would embarrass us both in mixed company.
Five minutes. I have five minutes and a former lover watching me over his teacup. Conduct yourself like a professional, Devereaux. Amber, the menace, either doesn't notice or — far more likely — notices completely and has quietly decided my suffering is this morning's breakfast entertainment.
Marshall makes a low, knowing sound and unfolds himself out of his chair.
"Where do you think you're going?" I say.
"Out." He collects his cup, drains the last of the coffee, and sets it in Amber's sink like he pays rent here.
"The way I see it, you're going to need an extra five minutes with her parked right there, unless the plan is to go strolling into town hall to sign your federal paperwork sporting a hard-on.
" He tips me a slow wink. "State your intentions to the government looking like that, they'll rubber-stamp the whole pack on the spot. Real committed energy."
"Get out," I tell him, with feeling.
He's laughing as he heads for the door.
He pauses there, though, one hand resting flat on the frame. Amber — because she can no more let a loose thread lie than I can — twists around on my lap to look at him.
"Why are you helping?" she asks him. "You don't even know me."
Marshall looks back at the two of us. For a moment that easy black-cat mask of his slips. What sits underneath it is older, quieter, a great deal more tender than he'd ever cop to out loud.
"I don't know your whole story," he admits.
"That's true enough. But I know him." He nods at me.
"And Sawyer doesn't devote himself to just anybody.
He never has, not once in all the years I've had him.
When this man picks a person — truly picks them — it means something down in his very soul has gone still and certain about what it wants.
Otherwise he'd never spend the time. He'd never spend the effort.
" A beat. "He'd sure as hell never pick up a phone and call me. "
He looks away, out through the window at the gray of the early morning.