“Oh, of course, I just meant—”
“No,” Tiffani said. She latched her thumbs together and flapped her hands like wings. “I mean, why don’t you give me a ride? Can you do that?”
She could have looked at that grin all night. It was the kind of look that could give a woman ideas. She set off walking, making herself only look where she was going. Looking at that grin was only going to make her think about other kinds of rides.
She had loved lying beneath him in that hotel bed, watching the way the muscles in his arms stood out as he bore forwards, reaching around to feel his ass. That wasn’t even a part of a man she’d thought she cared about before, but there was something mouthwatering about his.
She had loved the moment when a drop of his sweat had fallen on her skin. She’d been so hot for him that she had almost expected to hear it sizzle and steam.
And that was not what she wanted to be thinking about right now, not when she was still in the courthouse hallway. And not when she was asking for the kind of ride that was for the girl in her, not the woman.
“I can do that,” Martin said, falling into stride beside her, bringing that gorgeous grin of his into her peripheral vision. “I’d love to.”
“And people won’t see?”
He shook his head. “People don’t see us unless we want to be seen.”
“So would I look like I was just floating through the sky?”
Martin laughed. “No, it’s an all-inclusive invisibility. I’d take you with me in every sense of the word.”
She swallowed. “I’d like that. I would... love that.”
“I’ll always take you with me,” Martin said softly.
Some small part of her still whispered that she wasn’t what he was looking for, no matter what he thought. Maybe his primal instincts wanted her, but primal attraction, however hot and heavy, wouldn’t last forever. Sooner or later, he would want class and good conversation and courage. Two things Gordon had said she could never offer and one thing she knew she had never had.
But Martin thought she was courageous.
Smart and funny and brave—that’s what he called me.
If Martin was such a smart guy, what made her think he was so wrong about her? Why was she believing Gordon’s assessment of her over Martin’s?
Gordon knew you longer, a mean voice in her head whispered. He had years to form an opinion. He knew you better.
But the part of Tiffani that had gotten her out the door to take those stenography classes, the part of her that her stepdaughter knew and loved—that part of her said that Gordon never really knew her at all.
Okay. She was putting Gordon behind her. Not just for the rest of the day, but for good.
She could leave him on the ground while she soared up with Martin.
“Then let’s go,” Tiffani said. She held out her hand to him and he took it. His fingers were broader than hers, slightly squared at the tips, and callused. It made her weak at the knees. “Take me on a magic carpet ride.”
*
It was better than any magic carpet ride.
Martin swept her up a side stairwell. Racing up the stairs made them both breathless, but it didn’t stop them from kissing each other up against the wall. Tiffani felt giddy, as heedless and silly as a teenager. Really, though, all those stairs they had just sprinted up were years laid out beneath them. They had been the years it had taken to get them both here, to this moment of Martin swinging open the door to the courthouse roof.
“Should that be unlocked?” Tiffani said, momentarily distracted. “It seems like a security risk.”
“It is, and we warn them about it, but it always gets that way anyway. The bailiffs break the lock so they can get out onto the roof and smoke, and everyone turns a blind eye because half the time there’s a judge out here with them.”
It was just a little strip of chalky, stuccoed rooftop, a way of getting to some of the water-and-power systems. Not exactly scenic. Looking at the courthouse from the ground, most people probably wouldn’t even know this little patch of rooftop was there. They would only see the dome and the peaks to either side and miss this little runway.
This little runway that, for right now, was just theirs.
“No judges now,” Tiffani said.