Page 45 of Love Walked In

I could laugh, shrug it off, tell him it hadn’t affected me.

But I could sense his care, his worry, and I didn’t want to just leave him with it.

“Thanks. It was pretty overwhelming.” I rubbed my toe on the carpet.

“I just didn’t have anyone for so long, and I’m going to need time to get used to people wanting me around.

” I hated how strained my voice was, but sometimes the truth was a scared, fragile thing.

He paused for a second. “You don’t have to be close to everyone, Mari. You don’t have to be close to me, even.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Even though I’m your daughter?” Wasn’t that what he wanted the most?

He shook his head. “No, that’s not what I meant.

” He tented his hands and put his fingertips to his mouth, then said, “I’d love it if you wanted that kind of relationship with me.

I’d love to chat to you about books, take you to the football.

Do things a dad would do with his grown-up daughter.

But you’re almost thirty, and I think it’s fair to say that you can decide to spend as much or as little time with me as you like.

I never, ever want you to feel you have to.

” He looked me in the eye. “We should choose each other.”

A wave of relief came over me, the end of stress, like I’d been running an ultramarathon, gasping and panting for air as I tried to escape from the pain and sadness chasing me, and I could finally just stop and be. “Thank you,” I said, meaning it with my whole heart.

Instead of replying, Jamie reached out and squeezed my hand, and right that second I knew I would come back to London. I didn’t know how, or when, but I knew I didn’t want Jamie to become a footnote in my history.

My dad smiled. “Here’s your man. Looking sharp, Leo.”

“Thanks,” my lover said. “Hello, darling.” He brushed his lips over my temple.

“Hi,” I blurted, lost for any other words.

In his slim-cut black suit and shirt and glasses, he looked like he was about to single-handedly take down three henchmen, hack into the supervillain’s computers to thwart his world domination plans, then wash it all down with a dry martini.

Lethally handsome and lethally capable. He even had a pocket square…

and it was green. Not just any green, but a rich pine green like my dress.

“Are you looking forward to any event in particular?” I stuttered as I turned back to Jamie.

Jamie smiled sheepishly and pulled a stack of old, battered Cliff Thomas paperbacks out of the tote bag. “I started reading Cliff as a teenager. It’s rare to have an author you want to read when you’re fifteen and fifty. Forgive me if I monopolize him when he’s signing.”

Leo put his arm around my waist. “That was all Mari’s doing. We went out to his place in Somerset and she charmed him into coming.”

“Of course she did, she’s so clever,” Jamie said, and his praise was a warm little fire I wanted to hold my hands up to.

He shifted on his feet. “I should let you two get on, but I want to take you lot out for a pint tomorrow night. Graham’s said how hard you all have been working, you should celebrate. ”

“We’d love that,” Leo said with a huge smile that matched mine.

Once Jamie had ambled off to look for a seat, I turned and smoothed my hand over Leo’s silky lapel. “Devil boy, if you had worn this suit when we first met, I would have done whatever you wanted me to do.”

The evil grin I adored spread across his face. “And what would have been the fun in that?” He tugged me close. “Besides,” he said more quietly, “I like you stubborn.”

I gulped hard. The last time he’d said that adjective, I’d been writhing underneath him in the dark, half-gone from needing to come from his hand between my legs, his chest pressed to my back and his mouth hot against my ear as he told me I had to wait .

He brushed a finger across my pink cheek. “Lost for words, darling?”

“Mean,” I finally squeezed out of my tight throat. “So mean.”

He leaned in for a quick peck. “But I always take care of you, don’t I?” When I nodded, still a little turned on, Leo took me in. “I do love that dress. Have ever since you wore it to charm Tommy.”

I found myself craving one more compliment.

“What do you love about it? Does it make you want to draw me again?” One night I’d woken up to the scratch of pen on paper, and after I pleaded, he showed me a Chagall-esque sketch of me asleep on my side, the flower tattoos on my body spilling down in cascades of blossom onto the shadowy sheets.

He smiled quietly, and trailed a gentle hand down my arm. “It’s soft and touchable and lovely like you. It makes it impossible not to want to get close to you.”

That gentle touch set off something wild inside me, the same wildness that had made me confess a few nights ago how I could imagine giving everything to him. If I weren’t leaving, if I didn’t have a life six thousand miles away. If we had world enough, and time, like the old poem said.

But we didn’t. All I could do was make the most of what we had.

“Hello, children,” Judith said behind us, and we both turned to greet her, Tommy standing by her side bashfully. When she pointed to her cheek, Leo leaned down and bussed it.

“Judith, I love your outfit,” I said warmly.

Judith smoothed the silver velvet of her draped jacket with one hand. “Thank you, my dove. It’s no poppy-red caftan with a plunge, but it’s good to be dressed up again for the first time in a while.”

“I remember that red dress,” Tommy said with a blush.

Judith raised her eyebrows and grinned naughtily. “Do you now?”

He nodded, the ghost of the very young man he’d been rising to the surface.

“I was trying to impress that old gasbag Beardsley, but I saw you in the middle of my little speech about how he’d reinvented the comedy of manners and I almost swallowed my own tongue.

And then, of course, you came over and winkled out of him that he’d never read Pym, or Heyer, or any Austen whatsoever. ”

Judith patted his arm. “I would say I was sorry about that, but I’m absolutely not.”

Tommy smiled. “I would never want you to be. I’m a better genre writer than I ever was a literary stylist, anyway.”

I squeed a little inside at the electricity coursing between them. It wasn’t quite matchmaking, but I was glad I’d had a part in getting these two back in the same room.

But Judith had turned back to us, her face suddenly very sober. She said to Leo, “We need to have a family meeting tonight, after everything finishes. Mari, I’d like you to be there, too.”

Leo and I blinked at each other. “Dad hasn’t said anything,” Leo said carefully.

She shook her head. “This isn’t David’s idea. It’s mine.”

He raised his eyebrows at me, and I raised my hands palms up, so far in the dark that I didn’t have a clue where the light switch was.

“Of course we can meet,” he said. “Just a bit surprised.”

“Of course.” Judith tilted her chin at me with a small smile. “Now, I’m sure you two will want a moment alone before we begin.”

We hadn’t exactly been discreet, but the familiar look Judith gave the two of us, making crystal clear what she meant, made me blush anyway.

“What do you think she wants?” I asked once she’d made her way downstairs and Tommy had headed back to the greenroom.

“I’m not certain,” he said, thinking aloud. “But she wouldn’t ask unless it’s serious.” His face shifted, his mouth opened. “But we’ll be there together, and that’s what matters,” he finally said, his voice firm, like he’d suddenly made a decision.

“Is everything OK?” I asked, a flash of panic shooting through my system.

“Come here,” he said instead, and I gasped softly as he tugged my hips, molded my body to his, then kissed me like I was chocolate and marshmallows, soft lips and seeking tongue and just a hint of teeth. I couldn’t hold back a moan into his mouth.

Too soon, he pulled back. “All right, we’ve got a festival to put on.”

He turned for the stairs and I followed with my hand over my lips, feeling like something big was on the edge of happening. And despite Leo’s bravado, something inside me wasn’t sure if it would be good.