For You (The 'Burg #1)(190)

I laughed and Kath said, “You just had a month and a half off and then some.”

“Yeah, through April showers, now sun’s out and I feel the need to go fishin’,” Marty answered.

“Then what you doin’ at the Station on your day off?” Kath asked.

“Heard Monica’s in lockdown so I came to take a picture.” He lifted up a digital camera. “Wanna put one in the visor of all the cruisers, do my bit to keep morale up.” He turned to me. “Wanna copy?”

I shook my head. “Thanks, but no. I’ve seen enough of Monica for awhile.”

“Reckon so,” Marty replied and I gave him a smile that said more than the fact that I thought he was funny. It was the smile I’d given him in his hospital room and more than a dozen times besides, in fact, every time I went to his house, with Colt, with Mom and Dad, with Dee and the kids, all of those times bringing casseroles or Mimi’s baked goods, all of them not ever going to be enough to say “thank you for taking a bullet to the neck in an effort to protect me”.

After I gave him my smile, I turned to Kath.

“Okay if I go up?” I asked, my eyes going to the stairs before I looked back at her.

“Sure,” she said.

I smiled at her, gave Marty’s arm a squeeze and then headed up the stairs.

Colt was at his desk, his back to me, his hand holding a phone to his ear and I got a tickle in my belly from both seeing him and from holding my secret.

He turned to me and I read right away he wasn’t in a good mood. He tipped his head to the chair by his desk and I headed that way.

“You got until Friday, Ned,” I heard Colt say as I sat down beside his desk and I knew he wasn’t in a bad mood just because of Monica but because we’d hired Ned to build onto the garage and he was jacking us around getting it finished. This was unusual. Ned was known to get his work done on time and on budget. Then again, Ned’s wife had chosen about two days into our job to do a runner with one of Ned’s workmen, leaving Ned with two kids not yet in kindergarten and, therefore, Ned’s mind was on other things.

“Yeah, I get it, I know you’ve hit the shit but you said it’d take three weeks. We’re workin’ on week six and I got a driveway full of crap. Both Feb and I are parkin’ our cars on the street and Feb’s car’s barely got its new plates,” Colt told him and I smiled to myself because my new car with new plates was a cute, little, blue, convertible Volkswagen Beetle.

I’d won that fight using my high-heeled black shoes, a lacy black teddy that Jessie and I picked up at Victoria’s Secret and the pool table. My strategy worked, by the time I asked him, Colt couldn’t say no.

This was well before his birthday. On his birthday, he got what he’d always had way back when. Mom’s pork tenderloin with her famous mustard sauce followed by an angel food cake and the whole family packed around our dining table. Dee had given him a framed picture of me and Colt that she took at the bar. It showed Colt at his stool, his legs spread, me standing between them. I had one arm around his shoulders, my other hand on his chest and my lips were resting on his hair. He had his forehead on my shoulder. We were both in profile but you could see we were both laughing. I didn’t remember why we were laughing, but I did remember how his laughter felt sounding against my body. It was a great present and at that moment that picture was sitting on his desk.

My present was good too, it involved lacy underwear and high heels again, this time red and it included garters and stockings with seams up the back.

I liked Dee’s present best.

Colt liked my present better.

“Nope, Ned, don’t buy that since Jackie’s been watchin’ your kids,” Colt went on, paused then sighed and said, “Just get some focus and get it done. Yeah?” He listened for another second then said, “All right, later,” and he put down the phone.

Without hesitating, he rolled to me, leaned in, nabbed me behind the neck and pulled me forward for a hard, longish, closed-mouthed kiss right in front of everyone in the bullpen.

Back in the day Colt had been affectionate. He held my hand. He sat close and put his arm around my chair. When he walked me to class, he either had his thumb hooked in the back belt loop of my jeans or his arm around my shoulders.

Now it was the same and then some. If I was close, he was close, kissing, touching, holding hands, nabbing me and pulling me in to touch his mouth to the necklaces at my neck, wrapping his fist in my hair to hold my head steady just so he could talk to me. No matter where we were or who was watching.

At first I figured this had to do with what happened that day, what he’d walked into at the bar, what he’d walked into at Susie’s. But I thought it’d die down. When it didn’t, I decided it had to do with all that and all that came before it and the fact that Colt was making up for lost time. I didn’t mind this, not at all. I didn’t care who was watching either and I was happy to make up for lost time and I’d be happy if it lasted the rest of my life.

“Whatcha doin’ here, baby?” he asked when he let me go but he stayed leaned into my space so I stayed leaned into his.

“Came by to tell you I got a reservation at Costa’s tonight,” I told him, having decided Costa’s was the perfect place to tell Colt, if it all went okay, he was going to be a father. We’d had three more reservations there since it went down with Denny and because of his work we’d had to cancel all three.