Page 35 of Love Walked In

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Mari

There was nothing austere or withdrawn about Leo after a week and a half of sleeping together. He was all chocolate-sweet mouth and hungry hands whenever we could sneak a moment alone at the store, playing with my hair, shaping my waist, kissing my neck.

“We have a festival to plan,” I whispered into his shoulder one afternoon when he’d asked me to hang back after a meeting, to smiling eye rolls from Graham and Catriona, then pulled me into his lap for a rerun of our first make-out session.

Amusement warmed his voice when he said, “Didn’t you just tell us all that tickets were selling well, and that we were just waiting for one more author? Are you saying you aren’t doing a spectacularly brilliant job?”

“Absolutely not,” I retorted.

He trailed long fingers down my spine. “Then it doesn’t hurt to take a break, does it?”

I sat back a little, took in the glow of his eyes behind his glasses, the high color in his cheeks and lips.

The lines in his forehead weren’t as deep, and the bags under his eyes had faded to shadows, even though we weren’t doing a lot of sleeping.

“No,” I answered finally. But a small voice in the back of my brain worried that if I noticed how happy I made him, we might be heading for a different kind of hurt.

On nights when Leo and I would both work, we’d close the building together then travel the forty-five minutes to the Airbnb holding hands.

I’d cook something basic like pasta with tomato sauce or baked potatoes with canned beans for me and butter and sour cream for him.

As Leo got confident that I wouldn’t force food on him, he was more and more willing to eat together, instead of waiting until I was busy doing something else.

Then we’d have sex. Which was all it was.

Adjectives like “transcendent” and “passionate” and “all-consuming” floated through my mind, but I popped them like the bubbles they were, ephemeral and insignificant.

Sex was just sex, an itch I needed to scratch, a physical requirement like food and heat and exercise. Not a religious experience.

But I would fall asleep cliffhanging like I usually did and wake up nestled in Leo’s arms. I guessed unconscious me was just trying to stay warm a lot of the time.

I ignored how the combination of soft sheets and his body heat wove itself around me, how the spicy herbal scent of his skin and the whisper of his breathing disarmed the part of my brain that had been wearing heavy armor for years and years.

This feeling of safety, of comfort, it was all just a postcoital haze.

In those ten days, the world outside the Airbnb window had changed, too.

London was still freezing, but I could see the days’ shadows getting a little shorter, the light lasting a little longer before the dark took over again.

I’d dared at one point to go outside without a hat pulled down over my ears and wasn’t punished with full-body shivers.

“Come on, the sun’s out, let’s go for a walk,” I said softly when I woke up with Leo on a rare day we both had off. The pale light streaming through the window and striping across the bedsheets made me want to feel it on my face.

Leo stirred against my back, and the hand that had been resting under my breasts slid slowly downward. “Let me make you come, then we can go out.”

I shifted away and turned over to look into his intent face, smiling to reassure him. “It’s only nine A.M . Plenty of time for that later.”

His eyes darkened. “But I want to lick you,” he said, his voice dropping an octave.

I didn’t doubt him. He was insatiable when it came to going down on me, and I’d have to be dead to resist that kind of hunger.

So I followed his urging hands, climbing up and over him until he could have his way with me, feasting while I held on to the headboard and tried not to wake up the neighbors by moaning directly into the wall.

“Again?” he whispered, fifteen minutes after he’d turned me into a messy, babbling wreck.

I burst out laughing. “Oh my God, I know you’re obsessed with the fact that I can orgasm more than once, but I think I’m closed for business. Please, please can we go outside?”

He sighed. “It just seems a waste of time now, not doing things that make you come.” But after a long kiss, he let me out of bed, and he took a deep breath of rinsed air the same way I did when we stepped out the front door.

We glanced at each other and smiled when we saw how people were wandering in the park, everyone’s faces turned toward the watery light.

“The days are getting longer,” Leo said quietly as we walked. “You can see the angle of the sunlight changing.”

A small child ran screaming happily after a gamboling dog, and I couldn’t help my grin. “That would explain why everybody’s that little bit more cheerful.”

He nodded. “The big change will come when the clocks spring forward. But it’s already making a difference.”

When I looked closely at Leo’s face, I saw his smile didn’t reach his eyes. I could guess why. Just after the clocks went forward for daylight savings, we’d have the Ross & Co. Festival. Right after that, I was going back to California.

But thinking about going home didn’t fill me with relief.

Despite the cold, despite the dark, despite the question mark over Ross & Co.

’s future… I could get used to it here.

Maybe it was nice not to be alone when I closed the door on the workday.

To swap book recommendations with Catriona, to laugh at a stupid meme with Graham.

To go home with someone special, not just for a few hours but day in, day out.

If I were being honest, there wasn’t any maybe. It was nice. I was… happy. But only for now.

I rubbed my temple. In the hurry to get outside, we’d skipped breakfast, and the lack of caffeine was starting to press on my brain.

“Let’s get your coffee,” Leo said warmly, taking my hand. “And a pastry? There’s three different bakeries on the market, so what kind would you like?”

“Sounds wonderful. I’m definitely a croissant girl.” Was this something I could have when I went back to California? Someone who wanted to know what I liked and enjoyed giving it to me? “But I’m buying,” I said, unable to accept it.

His mouth opened for a second, then closed, and he just shook his head. “If it would make you happy.”

Did it? Or was it just a knee-jerk reaction? But this wasn’t the kind of day for deep introspection. The sun was out, I was about to eat delicious pastry, and a gorgeous man wanted to take me back to bed later. All of my favorite things.

When we got to the shopping street at the end of the park, I bought an oat latte for myself and a mocha for Leo, and after devouring two crisp, buttery croissants, we meandered down the street looking in the windows.

There was a fishmonger with a man standing shucking oysters to order out front, a general store with a hodgepodge of household wares.

For a second I stopped in front of a little grocery store that had pyramids of oranges and tangerines outside glowing like lanterns.

Last on the street was a forlorn-looking antique store. “Closing Down Sale,” the handwritten sign in the window said.

“You want to look in there?” Leo said with an eyebrow raise when I lingered in front of the door.

“Just for a second,” I said, feeling a scratch of possibility in the back of my brain.

It was a grandmother’s attic of a store, flowery chintz and beige lace and walnut furniture, smelling vaguely of used-up lavender sachets and old paper.

An older woman with lilac-tinged white hair sat at a desk reading a tabloid newspaper and barely looked up as Leo and I wandered the meandering path through the displays.

I picked up a single teacup, rubbed my thumb across the smooth porcelain, outlining the little painted bouquet of violets on it.

“That’s not for sale on its own,” the woman said. “It’s one of a set of six, with the saucers.” Her voice was made of cigarettes and disillusionment. “The rest are in the back. You can have them for a tenner.”

I carefully put the cup down. “I’m sorry, I don’t have room in my suitcase for that,” I said, putting cheer in my voice.

She shrugged and turned back to her paper.

So much for customer service. “What’s next for this place?” I asked, keeping my voice casual.

A grunt. “Don’t know. Landlord wants to sell up, doesn’t he? It’ll probably be a posh shop selling thirty-quid soap and candles to all the fancy people moving in.”

I studied the fixtures. “That would be a shame.” I could tell the store had good bones under all the tchotchkes and fussy wallpaper.

Light flooded in from the south-facing windows, and cheerful pedestrians flowed past through the glass.

I pulled out my phone and googled, and saw there wasn’t a bookstore anywhere in the immediate neighborhood.

The nearest one was over a mile away, which wasn’t much in California driving distance but was a lot in a place focused around walking.

If I looked at this place, I could see a display of beautiful new hardcovers, with a cushioned window seat for customers to enjoy.

I could see setting up a coffeemaker and a teakettle behind the counter, and a cozy children’s section down the narrow stairs at the back.

It would be a little haven, the same kind of hideaway Suzanne had created in Orchard House, the one I’d wandered into at age eleven and never really left.

“That place could make an amazing bookstore,” I said quietly to Leo when we stepped outside.

He blinked and looked in the window again. “Could it?”