“So I’m going to propose this: Let’s enjoy our night together. We’ll take showers. Then I’ll cook us up something delicious to eat for dinner. And then we can relax, hang out, and enjoy each other with the time we’ve got.”
Somehow, that wording seems to set a certain mood.
The time we’ve got …
As if it will run out.
Despite the uncertainty, Chad smiles, appearing appreciative. “Better bet your ass I’ll cherish every fuckin’ second, Goodwin.”
I smile and kiss him. The kiss quickly deepens as he takes hold of me, and I’m quite sure we’ll never make it to the shower or eat dinner anytime soon—not if we keep this up.
No matter what path I decide to take next in my life, this I do know: I will always love Chad Landry, and no man will ever compare.
EPILOGUE
The Long Summer
I open my eyes to the warm sunlight.
I stretch in my bed, reaching every corner with my hands and my feet, all my muscles yawning with deep, delightful relief.
And then I hear the distant noise.
A sewing machine running from several rooms away.
I sit up at once. “Damn it! I told him, he’s gonna break it,” I say to no one at all, since I’m in this bedroom all by myself, and there isn’t a chance in hell of my ‘rogue seamster’ hearing me shout from all the way in here.
Swiping a pair of shorts off the ground, I plunge one leg in at a time, push my feet into a pair of the nearest shoes I can find—a pair of slippers—and march out of the room and down the hall.
By the way, this isn’t my apartment in Los Angeles.
This isn’t Los Angeles at all, in fact.
And it’s now approaching the end of the long summer. Two months later, to be precise. Nine weeks and six days later, to be even more precise.
I swing open the door to my studio at once. “I told you—”
Of course, I can’t get any more words out, because my eyes are at once struck by the sight of a completely naked, muscular Chad with his broad, tapered back facing me. He’s sitting on a tiny stool, his proud, tight buns spilling over it, and the muscles of his thick leg flexes as he presses his foot down on the floor pedal, making the sewing machine growl with its mighty power.
“Chad!” I shout over the noise.
He stops suddenly and turns around. “Mornin’!”
I glare at him. “I told you not to play with that! You’re gonna break the machine!”
“Hey, c’mon. I just wanted to try somethin’ out,” he insists. “I’ve been workin’ on a little somethin’ when you’re gone to the Evans’s for one of your meetings, and—”
“Cassie Evans financed that machine, I’ll remind you—as well as about twenty other things in this room—and if you break it …”
“I ain’t gonna break it. Sheesh, you’re actin’ like I can’t handle a toy, like a little boy-child. Here, come take a looksee at what I’ve been workin’ on.”
“A ‘looksee’?” I huff and start to cross the room. “You’re naked on my sewing stool. I think I can looksee enough from—”
I come to a stop behind him, my eyes falling on his work.
He pulls it out of the machine’s grip, snips the thread, then holds it against his chest. “Whattaya think?”
I put a hand to my mouth.
I think I’m pretending to appraise it.
Okay, I’m not going to lie. It’s bad. It’s terrible. It’s no good at all. I have no idea why Chad’s been wasting his time on this.
“It’s …” I start to say.
But of course I can’t say any of those honest things.
Isn’t it so ethically troubling, when your sense of honesty is challenged by your instinct to be compassionate?
“Hey, I didn’t say it was gonna be some LGD-caliber thing!” he protests, already getting defensive.
I wrinkle my face. “LGD …?”
“Yeah. LGD. Lance Goodwin Designs caliber. C’mon, it’s a nice acronym.”
“That isn’t a good acronym.”
“Yeah, it is. It’s a bunch a’ letters that mean something.”
“It isn’t even enunciable. Chad, you’re distracting me from my point. You’re not supposed to be playin’ around with these big, expensive machines.”
Chad lets go of his “project” and points at the sewing machine. “This is a small, expensive machine.”
I narrow my eyes at him.
He lifts his hands in surrender—his favorite gesture around me when he’s given up a fight—and rises from the stool. “Alright, then! I’ll leave it alone. I mean, I ain’t an expert or nothin’. I know I ought to leave the fashion mastery to the master, keep in my own lane and such.” He struts halfway across the room. My eyes inevitably drop to his ass, thinking things. He stops and peers back at me. “But I just like to hop into your shoes now and then and see what all the fuss is about. Speakin’ of …” He points down at my feet and cutely lifts an eyebrow. “Are those my slippers?”