“I would have, yes, being mad for you from the first instant. But I wonder if it would be as it is between you and me if you’d shut down your heart and only listened to your head.”
He kissed her hand again, turning the palm to his lips.
“We found each other. We recognized each other—our two lost souls—when logic says we shouldn’t have. The choices we made once we did brought us here.”
And here, even now, she thought, his touch, the stroke of his voice, could turn her insides to jelly.
“I like them both. And okay, maybe I have a little speck of guilt about Webster because I didn’t see the damn flame until he practically scorched me with it, and you followed that by kicking his ass.”
“Ah, good times.”
She cast her eyes to the ceiling and really tried not to smile. “It’s that I can’t see how this can work. If they were just going for the bang, the vacation whoopee, fine. But that’s not what I was looking at across that table.”
“And who doesn’t enjoy the vacation whoopee? And no, that’s not what it is—or that’s not the potential of it. They’re adults, Eve, and they’ll figure it out, one way or another. Meanwhile, I enjoyed our little interlude—and watching them enjoy each other.”
“And now he’s going off to watch people sing and dance, and I’m going back to work.”
“Do you think he’s derelict in his duties?”
“No.” She let out a long breath. “No, I know he’s on top of it. And I know when I’m being pissy.”
He made the turn to home. “Would it help if I tell you how very entertaining—even arousing—it was for me to watch you metaphorically grind Renee into fuming dust to the tune of ‘Whiskey in the Jar.’”
“Maybe. It was fun.” She rolled her shoulders. “It was satisfying. More fun, more satisfying when it stops being metaphorical, but pretty damn entertaining.”
“And arousing?”
She shot him a quick, cocky grin. “Maybe.”
They got out of the car, and he caught her hand before she could start up the steps. “Come with me.”
“No, you don’t. I’ve got to—”
“Take a walk with me on this bright summer evening. Love’s in the air, Lieutenant.”
“You mean watching me be a bitch got you stirred up.”
“It did. Oh, it did.” He gave her arm an easy swing with his. “When we go inside, we’ll work. But just now? There’s a bit of a breeze—finally—and it’s stirring in the gardens, and the woman I love has her hand in mine.”
He broke a blossom from a bush—she couldn’t have named it—and tucked it behind her ear.
It didn’t feel foolish, but sweet. So she left it there and walked with him.
They paused a moment at the young cherry tree she’d helped him plant in memory of his mother.
“It looks good,” she commented.
“It does. Strong and healthy. And next spring it’ll bloom again—we’ll watch it bloom again, you and I. It means a great deal.”
“I know.”
“She thinks you married me for power,” he said as they walked on. “Renee. As that’s what she’d have done. The power and the money is one in the same to her.”
“She’s wrong. I married you for the sex.”
He grinned. “So sure of that am I that I work diligently to hold up my end of it.”
They wandered into a small orchard, perhaps a dozen trees, branches heavy with peaches.