Page 50 of The Sun & Her Burn (Impossible Universe Trilogy #2)

She smiled at me when I made note of the shirt and hugged herself as she walked barefoot into the kitchen from the back hall.

“It’s my comfort shirt,” she explained as the fabric slid off one slim shoulder and the hem flashed around the very tops of her long thighs, turning the faded old shirt into something unspeakably sexy.

The sight of her like that combined with the knowledge that something I’d given her years ago had brought her comfort, the sexiness of that intimacy, made my cock twitch in my jeans.

Even though I had just finished agreeing with Adam’s summation that the three of us should remain only friends, I found myself opening my arms to her.

She stepped into my embrace with a relieved sigh and planted her face in my pecs as her arms twined around my waist.

“Thank you,” she breathed.

I kissed the top of her head and held her for a long moment until the chicken frying on the stove started to spit.

Adjusting her so that I didn’t have to break our hold, I turned back to the stove to flip the chicken, and satisfied with its sear, I flicked off the heat.

She stood quietly against my side as she watched me assemble everything I had organized by the side of the stove.

First, the fresh pasta in each bowl, then a few pieces of chicken, finished with the fragrant, creamy yellow sauce, and garnished with a sprinkle of flat-leaf parsley, freshly grated parmesan, and a generous crack of black pepper.

“It smells incredible,” she told me as I handed her a bowl and took two more into my other hand carefully before we walked in tandem to the living room.

“In Italy, we have the pasta dish separate from the meat dish,” I explained. “But here, you have condensed it because it is not very American to eat courses. Even though Mama would cluck at me, this is more efficient.”

She smiled, as I’d meant her to, though I’d been hoping for laughter. Linnea liked to laugh, and I loved to hear her do it. But the day had taken its toll, and she was soft, almost pliable as we went into the living room to see what Adam had come up with.

By the way we both froze, it was safe to say that he had surprised us both.

The cluttered living room had been transformed, and I wasn’t even sure how he had managed it.

The velvet couch was still against one wall facing the television, but the rest of the furniture had been taken out so that a wide space was left before the couch.

In that place, he had added a mattress, maybe even two, along the floor and draped them with a collection of a white duvet and colorful, crocheted blankets that Linnea had probably made herself, as well as an array of pillows.

Above it all, he had managed to string up some fairy lights I knew Linnea used on the back-porch railings, and a few of Miranda’s vibrant silk scarves to create a kind of glittering canopy.

It looked, quite simply, magical.

“Mr. Meyers,” Linnea said on a breath. “What have you done?”

He stood beside what was essentially a whimsical pillow fort with his hands clasped in front of him and feet braced in a military stance he’d habituated from his time in the Royal Armed Forces.

But Adam had always been better at lying with his body than his eyes, which were low-lidded as if to hide the vulnerability in them.

I wondered when the last time before he met Linnea that he had taken care of anyone.

Even himself.

“It seemed like something you would enjoy,” he said a little stiffly.

And I thought he was speaking to both of us.

Linnea moved out from under my arm to walk straight across the mattresses to him. Even though he didn’t open his arms, she plunked her head in the center of his chest as she had done with me and looped her arms around his waist, one hand still clutching her dinner bowl.

“Thank you,” she whispered just loudly enough for me to hear the thick words.

Adam stared down at her head, her hair wetting his expensive shirt, and softened into her embrace, wrapping his arms tightly around her back so that she snuggled even tighter to him.

His eyes connected with mine over the top of her head, and the smile he gave me was one of camaraderie and shy satisfaction.

We were taking care of our girl.

I lifted my chin at him, feeling my own smile play at the corner of my mouth as I got onto the mattress fort and sat down to one side.

“Come eat before the delicious food I labored over goes cold,” I directed them, lifting Adam’s bowl in offering.

Linnea pulled her face from Adam and whipped around to beam at me as she tugged the Brit with her free hand up onto the cushions with her. When she plopped down between us, her shoulder bumped into me, and she made sure Adam was that close on her other side.

She propped the bowl in her lap, crossed her legs so that an indecent amount of tanned leg was showing that drew both Adam’s and my regard, and happily stabbed her fork into the pasta.

“Who has the remote?” she asked.

A moment later, Adam dragged his gaze from her legs, caught me doing the same, and winked at me before he lifted the remote and hit play on Casablanca .

After Ingrid Bergman chose the wrong man in Casablanca , both Adam and I were subdued, probably because it too closely mimicked the moment I had asked Savannah to leave with me in London and she had chosen to stay with Adam only to divorce him less than six months later.

So Linnea suggested we watch Adam’s favourite film.

Which was Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo .

I’d known it was his favorite because we had watched it together more than once in London all those years ago, but until we sat together watching the story of obsession, madness, and love, I didn’t realize how much the film had influenced some of my own screenplay in The Dream & The Dreamer .

There was the shared sense of love as an illusion, of trying to force someone into a role they were simply not meant to play.

It made me reflective, as Casablanca had, but not in the same melancholy way.

Instead, it reminded me that I had not told Adam and Linnea about my screenplay.

Or the fact that they were my unwitting muses.

“I wrote something,” I said as Adam queued up our last film for the night. My own favorite movies were an impossible tie between Inception and Call Me By Your Name . As Adam hadn’t seen the Andre Aciman adaptation, Linnea insisted we watch that one.

I could tell by the cast of Adam’s mouth that he was not in the mood to watch two men fall in love in Italy, but he did not say no to her.

“What?” Linnea asked from the kitchen where she was assembling popcorn drenched in honey and sea salt.

Adam didn’t ask me to repeat myself.

His face was broken open with genuine—happy—surprise.

“You wrote something?” he repeated with boyish enthusiasm, leaning forward as to be closer to me as if drawn by a hook through his smiling mouth. “I would kill to read it.”

“No need for murder,” I demurred, but something bubbly was happening inside my chest that made me feel light and dopey. “I would love to have you both read it.”

They both waited as if they knew my pause was just a stepping stone to more.

I carefully sucked a deep breath through my teeth, telling myself it was foolish to be nervous. If I could present awards before my peers at award shows, charm late-night hosts and star in feature films, surely I could pitch a movie concept to these two people who had become my…friends.

“I wrote it for you both,” I said, the words raw. I cleared my throat and tried for more casualness. “That is, I had you in my mind’s eye when I wrote this story, and if you like the script, I had thought you might do me the honor of starring in it.”

Linnea blinked owlishly at me, her mouth dropped open in a little o of shock. Adam’s grin widened impossibly. I thought, if he had been a less restrained man, he might even have jumped up and down.

“Give it to me,” he demanded, holding out his palm as if he expected me to drop the screenplay into it that moment. “I’ll read it now.”

I laughed, scrubbing my hand through my hair. “I don’t have a paper copy with me as I obviously wasn’t intending to spend the night with you both. But…I could email it to you.”

“Do it,” Adam pressed, standing up to corral Linnea, who was still frozen in the doorway. He cupped her elbow and brought her forward to sit down in her place between us. “Do you have a computer or tablet, Sunbeam?”

The nickname stirred her from her stupor, and she nodded, “I bought one for Miranda to help with her cognitive and occupational therapy. It’s plugged in beside the fridge.”

Adam nodded curtly before heading into the other room.

Meanwhile, Linnea twisted herself to face me fully, her expression very somber.

“Are you serious about this?” She spoke quietly, as if a loud noise might scare my proposition away.

I nodded slowly and reached out to take the bowl of popcorn into my lap so I could hold her hand. “Very. I do not joke about my art. It’s a flaw, I admit.”

Her mouth flickered with a smile before falling flat, and her eyes were wide and darkly purpled like gathering storm clouds. “Why me? I told you once before, I won’t take handouts, Sebastian.”

My laughter took me by surprise, but it eased the last of my nerves, so I gave in to impulse and hauled my blond beauty into my lap with one hand, using the other to move the popcorn up onto the couch.

She looped her arms around my neck without complaint, and I loved that she settled so familiarly into my hold.

As if she had been born to sit within my embrace.

“Oh, trottolina , if I could hand the world to you on a platter, I would. Don’t doubt that and don’t hate me for it as it’s a sign of the man I am and the woman you are to inspire such devotion, capisci ?”

Her expression softened and she ran her fingers gently over my cheekbone and around the curve of my ear.

“That’s very sweet,” she murmured. “I would do the same for you. Do you know that?”

“ Si ,” I said, because I did.