“I know. We misinterpreted the silence from both sides,” Godiva said.
Alejo’s grin flickered. “Lance said he’d come down in a week or so and take a shift or two. Right now he’s in the middle of a huge case, bringing down a crooked CEO. Means all hands on deck, as this CEO has an army of equally crooked lawyers on tap. Courtroom drama. I respect him for it, but I never could have hacked that life.” With that, Alejo lifted his hand in a wave and left.
Godiva looked down at her laptop and did her yoga breathing to settle her insides, which seemed to have turned to jelly.
Then she remembered Rigo sitting patiently at that Starbucks, waiting on her.
The least she could do is get a move on.
She had herself well in hand when she got there. Alejo wasn’t there. Rigo looked up from his phone with that smile that she knew was only for her, as he said, “Alejo just texted me about sixteen addresses for great food, and all within these four blocks.”
“I take it he’s not going to set up shop in here?”
“He’s in his van in the parking lot. He says he has a perfect view of the lobby through the glass door, and he can kick back and work on some carving while he waits. He doesn’t want to make a mess of wood shavings in the Starbucks.”
“What’s he making?”
“He’s repairing a wooden repl
ica of a sailing ship he found in someone’s garage, with a pile of old lampshades and other junk. It’s a beautiful piece of work, but got kind of beat up in someone’s attic for ages. Requires a lot of finicky carving, just the kind of thing he likes to do while listening to books on tape.”
The normalcy of the conversation helped Godiva get a grip on her emotions as they walked out. Rigo kept talking about Alejo’s projects as they strolled down the street to the first of the restaurants on the list, so they could look at the menu posted in the window.
They ended up with choice #3, an Italian place whose specialty was recipes from Tuscany. Over chilled Pappa al Pomodoro they talked about everything and nothing, pleasant as the conversation went—and superficial—as she kept hearing Alejo’s voice whispering in her head, mate for life.
She was only beginning to understand what that meant.
First, the inescapable fact that Rigo was leaving the decisions about this self-appointed mission of hers entirely up to her. Maybe all shifters weren’t alike. She had no experience here, despite her eighty-plus years. But she had relearned this much all over again: though, he, like her, grew up dirt poor, he was far more noble than any of the legendary knights of old. He blamed himself for what had happened between them so long ago. Judged, juried, and it remained only for her to deliver the sentence, after all these years.
He would not oppress her by asking for mercy.
It was late when they left the restaurant, and walked back hand in hand. By now it seemed natural, even necessary to walk holding hands. And when they got to the B&B, outside her room, and she said, “Do you want to come in?” his lips parted, then he said voicelessly, “Yes.”
He walked in.
She shut the door behind him.
Here was her room, and there was the bed. She turned away from that, and sat carefully on the pretty chair in the corner, while he remained standing.
“I have something to confess,” she said, having thought out that much.
He raised a hand. “If it’s about your, ah, past, I always assumed you’d seek happiness however you could find it. As you deserve.”
“I did,” she said. “Whatever I might have deserved or didn’t deserve, I did try to forget you in other men’s arms. It never worked. Ever. Perfectly nice guys, but I could never let myself sleep with them. I mean literally sleep. I couldn’t wake up next to someone who wasn’t you. Mad as I was, I finally decided I was broken for life, and so I gave up the whole idea of love. And so here I am, as old as the hills and twice as wrinkled, but I feel like a kid again. I don’t even know where to start.”
“I do,” he said in Spanish, as he held out his arms. “Sé por dónde empezar, mi amada.” I know where to begin, my beloved.
It was the Spanish of their youth, in his familiar voice—an intimate voice.
She had always thought Spanish one of the most beautiful languages on Earth, and in his voice it was liquid gold pouring through her as he closed his arms gently around her, speaking all the while, until at last she lifted her face to his kiss.
The first one was short, tentative. Each of them was mutely asking the other, is it all right?
The answer was yes.
The second kiss was long, so long it left her gasping for breath, her entire body trembling. On fire.
She looked up at him. “The last time you touched me, I was not even twenty,” she said tightly. “My skin is like paper. Old paper. Saggy paper. My voice, which was never a siren’s, is now a parrot’s squawk.”