Heroes Are My Weakness(115)

“Chair?”

Shit. Now he was looking into both flaring nostrils and flaming hazel demon eyes.

“You’re the one who bought the chair!” she exclaimed.

He couldn’t show any weakness. “Who the hell else loves you enough to buy that ugly piece of crap?”

Her mouth was open again, and he was so wrung out that even his hair hurt, but he kept at her. “The job offer I have for you is real. I started a new book—one you’ll actually like—but I don’t want to talk about that now. I want to talk about us making a life together, and my getting a chance to show you that what I feel is bright and strong without any shadows hanging around. That’s what I want to show you.”

He yearned to tell her about Diggity. And tell her again that he wanted kids with her, in case she’d missed it the first time. He wanted to kiss her until she was dizzy. Make love with her until she couldn’t think straight. He would have done all that by now except she sat down. Right in the middle of the muddy road. As if her legs were useless. That put an end to his tirade as nothing else could have.

He went to her. Knelt next to her. A watery beam of sunlight found its way through the trees and played hide-and-seek with her cheekbones. The honey brown snarl of curls he loved so much had launched a full-out skirmish around her face—the most beautiful face he’d ever seen, brimming with life, animated with all the emotions that made up who she was.

“You okay?” he asked.

She didn’t respond, and Annie without words scared him, so he plunged back in. “I want a life with you. I can’t imagine a life with anyone else. Will you at least think about it?”

She nodded, but it was a wobbly nod, and she didn’t look certain about it. If he backed off, he might lose her forever, so he told her about Diggity and how he wanted her to illustrate the book he was writing for kids instead of adults, and how much his new readers would love her quirky sketches. He sat with her in the middle of the muddy road and told her love had always meant catastrophe to him and that was why it had taken him so long to label what he felt for her—the ease, the connection, the tenderness. He’d almost choked on that last word, not because he didn’t mean every syllable, but because—even for a writer—saying a word like tenderness out loud made him feel like he should turn in his man card. But she had her eyes glued to his face, so he said it again and then followed up by telling her how beautiful she looked when he was inside her.

That definitely got her attention, so he introduced a little smut. Lowered his voice. Whispered in her ear. Told her what he wanted to do to her. What he wanted her to do to him. Her curls tickled his lips, her skin flushed, and his jeans got way too tight, but he felt like a guy again, a guy hopelessly at the mercy of this woman who played with puppets and helped mute little girls talk again and rescued him from his own hopelessness. This quirky, sexy, utterly sane woman.

He touched her face. “I think I’ve loved you since I was sixteen.”

She cocked her head, as if she were waiting for something.

“I’m sure of it,” he said more firmly, even though he wasn’t sure at all. Who could look back on their teenage years and be clear about anything? But she wanted something more from him, and he had to give it to her, even if he had no idea what it was.

Out of nowhere, he heard a puppet’s voice. Kiss her, you dumbass.

There was nothing he yearned to do more, but he reeked of smoke, his face was coated with oily soot, and his hands were filthy.

Just do it.

And so he did. He tunneled his dirty hands through her hair and kissed her breathless. Her neck, her eyes, the corners of her mouth. He kissed her lips as if his life depended on it. Kissed their future into her. All they could have and all they could be. The soft sounds they made together became a poem to his ears.

Her hands clasped his shoulders, not pushing him away, drawing him closer. He lost himself in her. Found himself.

When their kiss finally ended, he kept his grubby hands cupped around her now equally grubby cheeks. Soot smudged the tip of her nose. Her lips were swollen from their kiss. Her eyes shimmered.

“Free secret,” she whispered.

His stomach twisted into its tightest knot. Slowly he released his breath. “Make it good.”

She pressed her lips to his ears and whispered her secret.

It was good. Really good. In fact, it couldn’t have been better.





Epilogue


THE SUMMER SUN SKIPPED OVER the crests of the waves and bounced off the masts of a pair of sailboats tacking into the wind. Cobalt blue Adirondack chairs sat on the garden patio, which had been positioned well in front of the old farmhouse to afford the best view of the distant ocean. Roses, delphinium, sweet peas, and nasturtium bloomed in the garden nearby, and a curving path led from the stone patio back across the meadow to the farmhouse, which was twice as big as it had once been. A grove of trees sheltered a small guesthouse off to the left where an ugly mermaid chair rested on the postage stamp porch.

On the garden patio, a market umbrella, folded against the early-afternoon breeze, rose from the center of a long wooden table large enough to accommodate a big family. An old stone gargoyle with a Knicks cap perched crookedly on its head had once guarded a house at the other end of the island. Now it crouched protectively near a clay pot overflowing with geraniums. The detritus of a Maine summer lay all around: a soccer ball, a pink riding toy, abandoned swim goggles, bubble wands, and waterlogged sidewalk chalk.