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“Of course. Why do you think I brought several bottles?” I hand her the saber with a flourish. “You just got your first investor, Cecilia. Brag as much as you like. This night belongs to you.”
A smile lights up her face. It reaches deep inside of me, twists. Too much. She sees too much, but I don’t want her to stop looking.
It takes several tries, and a bit of coaxing, but then she manages. A single swipe of the saber in her grip and the cork shoots out over the railing.
“Oh!”
“You did it.”
“Holy shit! That was such a rush!”
“You picked it up fast.”
“Liar,” she says, grinning. “It took me a dozen tries.”
“I couldn’t do it at all my first month at Andover.”
“I still can’t believe you did this at boarding school. What kind of place was that, really? I’m imagining you in a school uniform, harassing teachers.”
I chuckle. “It was an interesting environment, that’s for sure.”
“Is that Victor for ‘I hated it’?”
“I didn’t hate it,” I say. “At times, sure. But it was good for me to get away from living with my grandfather for a few years.”
“So you could drink champagne and smoke in the dorms.”
“Pretty much.” I wrap an arm around her shoulders and open the door. “Come on. You’re getting cold.”
“No, I’m not. I have champagne to warm me.”
“Then why were you shivering?”
She stifles a yawn with the back of her hand. “You need to stop winning arguments.”
“That’s the way I am,” I say. “And you, Cecilia, need to stop apologizing for bragging, or for your success, or for taking what you want.”
She sets her glass down and wraps her arms around my neck. I smooth my hands along her hips. She hasn’t said a word about the nightmare she’d woken me up from the other night. Nor did she comment when I got her from her own bed last night either, pulling her toward my bedroom. Sleeping next to her hadn’t been difficult. It hadn’t felt like a burden… and I hadn’t been waiting for her to fall asleep so I could head downstairs to my office.
I’d fallen asleep with the scent of her hair on my shoulder and the weight of her on my arm, and dreamt absolutely nothing.
“So,” she says. “Are we still going to the house tonight?”
“I’m planning to. But if you feel tired, stay home.”
She shakes her head. “I’m coming. It’s my opportunity to learn more about you.”
I snort. “Right. The Spanish Inquisition. If you ask too many questions I’ll banish you to the first floor.”
“That’s okay. I’m sure there will be interesting artifacts to uncover. Childhood trophies… your baby pictures.”
“If you’re looking for anything sentimental, you’ll be disappointed. But come on, let’s go.”
She hums along to the song on the radio as I drive us out to the house. The familiar route takes us out of the city and into the suburban paradise.
I’ll sort through papers tonight. That’s the goal, anyway, even if I know Cecilia might be a distraction. But she’d said she wanted to do more friendship things, whatever that meant. Not relationship-things, though. I’d thought that was what she’d been asking for, and had opened my mouth to agree when she’d cut me off with a staunch denial.
Which was just as good.
