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Even now, the next afternoon, even at her own house, even with the whining, intermittent buzz of the landscaping company’s weed cutters below her bedroom window.
Amid the noise, the sound of tires on the stone driveway rose.Jonathan?She hurried along the hall and down the stairs to the front door.
Through the sidelight windows, she saw the once-familiar blue van with the white letters parking in front of the house.King Dry Cleaning. Give Your Clothes the Royale Treatment.
She used to joke with Harris about the typo, about how the van needed a copy editor to remove the E on royale.
The truck hadn’t been to the house in more than a year, and she didn’t recognize the driver who was coming toward her, carrying a stack of shirt boxes.
“Mrs. Layborn?” He glanced at the yellow slip taped to the top box. “My boss found some items of yours in our Unclaimed room. Actually, looks like they’re for your husband. Says here we tried to contact him several times.”
She looked at the slip with its running list of dates, “Left msg,” scrawled beside each.
The driver shrugged. “I had a delivery nearby, so I thought I’d drop them off.” He was looking at her, expecting her to do something, but her hands were frozen in place.
“I . . . I’ll leave them here for you if that’s okay,” he said, motioning inside the doorway. “Or, wait, is there another address I should bring them to instead?”
She could read his thoughts.Maybe the guy doesn’t live here anymore.
“No, here’s fine; I’ll take them.” She couldn’t bear to send anyone away holding something of Harris’s in his hands.
She stepped aside to let him in, and he set the stack just inside the door. As he walked out, she closed it behind him before leaning against it and sinking to the floor, the hard wood cool against her back as she wept.
8
BEGINNER'S LUCK
It might have been the longest afternoon of his career, although somehow he had managed to download his photos and videos from the trip and, with Rich’s input, select the ones they would use for upcoming blog and social media posts and trailers. After the meeting he tried to write some of the content and the voice-over script for the show, but that was way too big an ask for his Quinn-addled brain.
By six-thirty, he was heading down the block for a takeout sandwich, which he wolfed down on the walk back to the office. A quick tooth-brushing, and he packed up, rode the elevator to the lobby, and was sitting in the thick of rush-hour gridlock with Gil by seven.
It had been over a week since he’d seen her; he should have taken the damn train.
When he finally got there, she opened the door and let him in. “Hi,” he whispered. She wore that silky black robe that stopped just above her knee. “I’m sorry again about last night.”
“It’s fine.” She waved off his apology, eager to change the subject. He was starting to know her micro-expressions, her tells, and he wanted to learn more. He wanted to learnher.
“Your trip okay?” Her voice and her eyes seemed sadder than he remembered.
“Yeah, it was good. Hectic.” He slipped off his shoes as he answered and noticed a stack of shirt boxes near the door, as if they’d been tossed there and forgotten. That didn’t seem like her.
Once they reached the living room, he set down his messenger bag and removed the blindfold, which he’d tucked in an outside pocket for quick access. “But it was too long.” He stepped behind her to tie the satin.
He wanted to say he had missed her, that he could not wait to see her. He wanted to kiss the soft skin along the length of her neck.
But he didn’t.
Instead, he reached for her arms and brought them behind her back, holding her wrists together with one hand. With the other, he picked up his bag and slung it over his shoulder, then guided her slowly up the staircase.
He led her into the bedroom, and once she stood beside the bed, he slipped the robe off her shoulders and helped her down, positioning her on the mattress on her back.
This time, he buckled the restraints he’d brought around her ankles and watched her shiver at the sound the straps made as he stretched and tied them to the bedpost.
“Scarves in your nightstand?” he asked on a whisper. That’s where she took them from last time, but he didn’t want to go through her things without asking.
She nodded yes.
He found them easily and, sitting beside her, tied her wrist to the bedpost before walking around the bed and doing the same on the other side.
