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THIRTY
"Would you like to watch some more TV?" Stan asked. He looked proud of himself for remembering the correct words, and prouder still when he picked up the remote and managed to make the screen light up.
"Actually, I'd prefer to listen to an audiobook before bed. But if you want to watch something, you go ahead. If you have any questions about what you see, write them down, and I'll try to answer them in the morning," Alethia said, pushing her notepad and a pen across the table at him.
Stan frowned. "What is an audiobook?"
"A recording of someone reading the book aloud. My mum bought me the whole series in paperback for Christmas because some of the girls where she works were raving about it, but I saw it was available in audiobook, so I bought that to listen to. When I first started listening, I was at work, and dug up something disturbing, so I haven't really gone back to it. But now I know you're the scariest thing in the cemetery, and you're here protecting me, I might be brave enough to attempt it." She glanced over at the bench, but her phone wasn't on the charger. "Damn, I must have left it in my pants pocket last night. Can you help me into the bedroom? I should be able to manage from there. Everything's only a short hop from the bed."
His eyebrows shot up. "You wish for me to carry you to bed?" That Voice again, like his thoughts were going exactly where hers were.
"If it's not too much trouble," Alethia said.
He scooped her up as if she weighed nothing. "Nothing you ask is too much trouble. I am yours to command."
For a moment, she considered commanding him to join her in bed. No more than that, though, because things had to have a sort of natural progression, not to mention consent. Not that she was going to say no if he suggested...something...
"Here?" he asked, setting her down on the end of the bed.
"Sure. Can you pass me the pants I was wearing yesterday?"
Yep, there was her phone, all right, deep inside the hip pocket of her jeans. With a dead battery. Alethia swore. No audiobook for her tonight, then.
"Can you help me put this on the charger?" She considered trying to explain, but it'd be easier to show him. "Carry me back to the kitchen for a moment."
It wasn't until her phone was back on its charger and she was sitting on the bed that she realised reading the paperback was her only option now. She reached for the brick of a book.
"I can read to you, if you wish."
If he did it in That Voice, no way was she going to turn him down. But...
"It's a fantasy romance, Stan. You might not like it," she forced herself to admit.
He drew himself up. "An adventure where people bond together to forge deep relationships through their trials, on their way to a happy ending? What sort of person does not like reading such books?"
A Regency fan of romance. Well, that was a new one. "If you're sure you don't mind..."
"I read all manner of novels to my mother when she was alive. Every week, she wanted new books from the library. She liked gothic novels the best, but she enjoyed romances, too, and she said I had the best reading voice of anyone in my family."
If he'd used That Voice, Alethia wasn't surprised. Stan's mother was a lucky woman to have her own personal audiobook narrator on command, way back when.
"All right, then." She held out A Court of Thorns and Roses.
Stan settled into the chair beside the bed and began to read.
