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“It’s no big deal.” I lean in and kiss her cheek. “Shit!” I clench my fist.
“No coffee cups?” She giggles again. The sound echoes in my flat as if trying to be at home. “No problem.” She waves. “I can use a glass.” She riffles through my cupboards, quickly finding a glass beer mug. “Perfect!” She fills the thing with coffee and takes a sip. “Thank you.” She cheers me.
I flick my wrist with a bow. “You’re welcome.” Impressed I survived the first wrinkle in our relationship. Granted, it’s only coffee, but hey, I delivered.
And she’s still here.
“So.” She holds the mug in her hands. “How’s this going to work?”
“What?” Oh, shit. I sense another wrinkle coming on.
“Do you want me to pick up the coffee, or will you take care of it for the next time?” There’s a teasing twinkle in her eyes, but I like her “next time” comment.
“I’ll take care of it.” I slip my arm around her waist. “I swear, you’ll never wake up in my place again without coffee.”
Her wide green eyes glare up at me. “We’re really going to do this?”
“We are.” I lean in for a chaste kiss. “Now.” I gaze down into her brilliant eyes. “I have the day off. What do you want to do?”
“Well…” She slithers from my hold and heads to one of the bookshelves. My T-shirt hangs long enough to cover her ass. I get hard just from the view. “I could pick out a book.” She runs her fingers over the spines. “And you could read it to me.”
“What did you have in mind?” I wander over to her, confident I could find something she liked.
“Hmm.” She places a finger on her lips, inspecting the titles.
I watch her, wanting to pick her up and take her to the bedroom to have my way with her again. But then, a thought kicks up in my head. “Have you ever thought of writing a book?”
“Me?” Her eyes flash to mine.
“Yeah. You write for the paper. Why not write a book?”
“Articles are short. They take a day to a few weeks—a book.” She twists around to face me. “Well, that’s a different kind of commitment and dedication. It’d have to mean something to me. And, honestly, nothing has inspired me to do that. Not that my articles don’t matter. They do. But they’re facts. I’m telling the parts of a story that have already been written. Kind of like you did last night in bed.” Her cheeks blush. “I put it all together for the reader to read and develop their own conclusion. A book, now that’s a different kind of beast.”
My hand slithers around her waist. “I bet you’d slay that beast.”
“Like you did last night?” She chuckles, gazing up at me. “Maybe someday I’ll find something worth slaying that beast for. Until then, I’ll stick with the articles.” She taps me on the chest before moving toward the sofa. “Why don’t we watch some TV and relax instead?” She sits down and pats the cushion. “You do know how to relax.”
“I do.” I join her, getting the sense the book discussion made her uncomfortable. Why? I have no idea. “I’m not convinced you do, though.” I laugh. Perhaps that’s my answer. She’s a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants person, and writing a book would be too much of a commitment, as she mentioned. And I get it. Commitment isn’t easy, but I’m willing to give it my best when it comes to her.
“If I get antsy, you can always take me into the bedroom.” She bumps my shoulder with hers.
“Get antsy,” I dare.
Her smile tethers. “I’m sorry about everything, ya know, with my uncle. That I thought you had something—”
I place my hand on hers. “I get it. You didn’t know me. You thought the worst to protect yourself. I’m just sorry about how it all went down. He seemed like a stand-up guy.” I entwine my fingers into hers. “The first thing Reacher ever said to me was, ‘There are bad apples on every tree. Don’t be one of them.Apples tend to rot from the inside out. So don’t let all the bad shit around you get inside.’ And for some reason, it made sense. Trace Morton was rotten to the core. I wanted to be nothing like him.”
“Yeah.” Her eyes avert to our hands. “My uncle always had something wise or insightful to say.”
“You were lucky to have him.”
“I was.” She lifts her eyes to mine. “My mom worked a lot on the weekends. But he was always there for me whenever I needed him. He took me to my father-daughter dance in high school. Taught me how to drive. And then, we’d spend every Sunday together. Well, there was this one Sunday when he didn’t show up. I remember because it was my fourteenth birthday, but I got over it.”
“When’s your birthday.”
“June twenty-eighth.”
“How old are you?”
