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He snorted, his resolve gone. He didn’t know how to tell her not to die without sounding like a stupid kid, like a selfish man. And she was so much better than yesterday, colour in her face, able to eat and stay awake. It could wait, he should simply enjoy being with her.
He picked up the book, An Affair to Remember. “You want me to read this one?”
“Please.”
“The things I do for you.”
He opened the book at her dog-ear. He made her wheeze with laughter when he stuttered over a love scene that came a few pages on. It wasn’t graphic, didn’t mention a single body part, but his face got hot and he flapped his jaw all the same.
In the book, the couple had reunited after a steamy affair years ago. There was all this sappy stuff about wasted years and wrong-headedness, but how their love was stronger than the winds of change and the tides of fortune. Fricking heck.
“How long was their affair?”
Buster held up two fingers.
“Two years?”
“Nights,” she croaked.
He laughed. “Two nights! How many months ago?”
She held up a trembling hand.
“Five months!”
She shook her head.
“Five years!” He laughed. That was insane. “I’m not sure you should be allowed to read this stuff. It’s pretty...” He didn’t know what it was, it wasn’t porn, despite the passionate lip-locking, it wasn’t racy, no one even swore. But it was delusional. He flicked back to the cover. Maybe it was meant to be a fantasy, but no, two perfectly normal people in a clinch, pictured inside a floral porthole design; no fangs, no wings.
Despite the crappy cover art and the wacky set-up, it’d sucked him in good and proper, and as weird as it made him feel, he wanted to keep reading to see if Antonio and Lucinda finally got it on again.
Antonio was some kind of billionaire who never worked, with boofy hair and a yacht. Lucinda was his secretary. Antonio was a tortured alpha douche predator and Lucinda was a breathy waif with stars in her eyes, not quite a dumb blonde, but close.
“He’s going to dump her, isn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“Man, that’s twisted. He’s her boss.”
Buster rolled her lips into her mouth, she was laughing at him.
He slapped the book on the railing of the bed. “She’s not my actual boss and I’m not naive enough to think she’d wait for me for five months, let alone five freaking years.”
“Who knows? Maybe.”
“I bloody well know. It doesn’t work like that in real life.”
“That’s why...” she coughed.
“That’s why you like these books, right?” She liked them because they were nothing like the life she’d had. A husband who’d abandoned her with a young baby, the baby who grew up not strong enough and had her own kid too young, then having to raise that kid too. Not much romance in Buster’s life; not much comfort, security, support, or love flowing back her way.
She nodded and he wished he could build her a Tardis, time travel her, have her meet a man with money and boofy hair who’d kiss her like she was his sun and moon.
“Keep hoping, Mace.”
He squinted at her. Did she mean the book? There was no hope for the book, or any reality to Antonio and Lucinda, and Buster was no dummy, she’d worked as a florist for most of her life and volunteered at the local library. She knew about all sorts of books, but yet she chose these flaky romance ones. He shook the book, he had no idea why she liked this junk so much.
“Lucinda will win him back,” she said.
